[VBA] How to Select a Folder Using a Dialog Box

2025年12月26日

Introduction

I was creating a VBA program to create a folder and save Excel files inside it. Initially, I fixed the folder path directly in the code. However, I realized that the destination folder might change each time I run the program.

To solve this, I learned how to use a dialog box that allows the user to select the destination folder manually.

Solution: Using a Dialog Box

VBA provides a specific feature to display a dialog box for selecting folders: Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker).

Code Example

Sub SelectFolderUsingDialog()

    Dim SelectFolder As String

    ' Set up the folder selection dialog
    With Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker)

        ' If the user clicks "OK", .Show returns True
        If .Show = True Then
            ' Get the path of the selected folder
            SelectFolder = .SelectedItems(1)
            MsgBox "The selected folder is: " & SelectFolder
        End If

    End With

End Sub

Code Explanation

Dim SelectFolder As String Declares a string variable to store the path of the selected folder.
With Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker) Configures the settings for the folder picker dialog.
If .Show = True Then Displays the dialog box. If the user selects a folder and clicks “OK”, .Show returns True. If they click “Cancel”, it returns False.
SelectFolder = .SelectedItems(1) Retrieves the full path of the folder selected by the user.

Next Steps

By using this dialog box feature, users can freely choose the destination folder every time.

In practice, you can expand this code to create a more useful tool by combining it with logic to create new folders or save Excel files to the selected path.

Summary

In this article, I explained how to select a destination folder using a dialog box.

Using Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker) significantly improves the usability of your tool by allowing flexible folder selection. FileDialog also has arguments for other purposes (like selecting files), so I plan to learn how to use those depending on the situation.