---
title: "A Little Macro To Automate Creating Connection Strings"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/6/22/a-little-macro-to-automate-creating-connection-strings.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/6/22/a-little-macro-to-automate-creating-connection-strings.html"
published: "2003-06-22T18:44:00"
updated: "2003-06-22T18:44:00"
tags: [".Net Original", "Tips & Tricks"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I've created a little macro that automatically creates a connection string and inserts it in your code. It pops up the infamous \" Data Links \" dialog for you, saving you, the poor programmer, from having to remember all…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# A Little Macro To Automate Creating Connection Strings

By Roy Osherove June 22, 2003 In [.Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original), [Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 22, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

I've created a little macro that automatically creates a connection string and inserts it in your code. It pops up the infamous "_Data Links_" dialog for you, saving you, the poor programmer, from having to remember all those pesky little syntax details.... :)

No references needed for this. **Thank** **god** for CreateObject :)

Public Sub InsertConnectionString()

Dim links As Object = CreateObject("DataLinks")

Dim cn As Object = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

links.PromptEdit(cn)

If cn.connectionstring = "" Then Exit Sub

Dim sel As TextSelection = ActiveDocument().Selection

sel.Text = cn.connectionstring

End Sub

Now just add a shortcut for it and you're ready to roll...

## More in .Net Original

[All posts in .Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original)

- Jun 27, 2003

    ### [Quick & Easy ADO.NET Speed Improvements](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/6/27/quick-amp-easy-adonet-speed-improvements.html)

- Jun 22, 2003

    ### [Disabling Connection Pooling](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/6/22/disabling-connection-pooling.html)

- Jun 21, 2003

    ### [Winforms Data Binding Lessons Learned](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/6/21/winforms-data-binding-lessons-learned-1.html)

- Jun 19, 2003

    ### [How To Know When An External Application Exits](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/6/19/how-to-know-when-an-external-application-exits.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/