How to create a GUID in Excel?

Question

I need a function to add a GUID to cells in excel. I found this previous question on stackoverflow, but it is not working. It suggests the following function:

=CO         


        

Answer 1

Ken Thompson is right! - for me also this way works (excel 2016), but type definition GUID_TYPE is skipped, so full scripting is:

Private Type GUID_TYPE
    Data1 As Long
    Data2 As Integer
    Data3 As Integer
    Data4(7) As Byte
End Type

Private Declare PtrSafe Function CoCreateGuid Lib "ole32.dll" (Guid As GUID_TYPE) As LongPtr

Private Declare PtrSafe Function StringFromGUID2 Lib "ole32.dll" (Guid As GUID_TYPE, ByVal lpStrGuid As LongPtr, ByVal cbMax As Long) As LongPtr

Function CreateGuidString(Optional IncludeHyphens As Boolean = True, Optional IncludeBraces As Boolean = False)
    Dim Guid As GUID_TYPE
    Dim strGuid As String
    Dim retValue As LongPtr

    Const guidLength As Long = 39 'registry GUID format with null terminator {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}

    retValue = CoCreateGuid(Guid)

    If retValue = 0 Then
        strGuid = String$(guidLength, vbNullChar)
        retValue = StringFromGUID2(Guid, StrPtr(strGuid), guidLength)

        If retValue = guidLength Then
            '   valid GUID as a string
            '   remove them from the GUID
            If Not IncludeHyphens Then
                strGuid = Replace(strGuid, "-", vbNullString, Compare:=vbTextCompare)
            End If

            '   If IncludeBraces is switched from the default False to True,
            '   leave those curly braces be!
            If Not IncludeBraces Then
                strGuid = Replace(strGuid, "{", vbNullString, Compare:=vbTextCompare)
                strGuid = Replace(strGuid, "}", vbNullString, Compare:=vbTextCompare)
            End If


            CreateGuidString = strGuid
        End If
    End If

End Function