Create a VBScript File in Windows

What VBScript is

VBScript (Visual Basic Script) is a light scripting language built into Windows. It is good for small jobs such as pop-up messages, file handling and system tasks. Scripts are plain text files.

Your first script

1. Open Notepad from the Start menu.

   

2. Type this line:

MsgBox "Hello, world!"

MsgBox shows a message box with your text.

1. Click File, then Save As. Choose All Files as the type and name the file myscript.vbs.

   

Run it

Double-click the file. The message box appears.

Or use Command Prompt:

1. Search for cmd in the Start menu and open it.

   

2. Go to the folder of the script with cd and run:

cscript myscript.vbs

Basic elements

Variables. Declare them with Dim. VBScript has no type names, every variable is a Variant:

Dim name
name = "Hostvento"

Value types you can store: text (String), whole numbers (Integer), decimals (Double), True or False (Boolean) and dates.

Operators

• Arithmetic: +, -, *, /, ^
• Comparison: =, <, >, <=, >=, <>
• Logical: And, Or, Not

Control structures

• If ... Then ... Else for choices
• For ... Next and Do ... Loop for loops
• Select Case for many choices

A practical example

This script asks for two numbers and shows their sum. CDbl turns the text from the input box into a number:

Dim num1, num2, result
num1 = CDbl(InputBox("Enter the first number:"))
num2 = CDbl(InputBox("Enter the second number:"))
result = num1 + num2
MsgBox "The result is: " & result

Good to know

• Use On Error Resume Next to handle errors.
• VBScript supports regular expressions.
• Use the FileSystemObject to work with files and folders.
• WScript.Shell lets a script run other programs.
• Modern Windows versions still run VBScript, but Microsoft plans to remove it in a future release. For new work, PowerShell is a better choice.

Quick recap

• Save your code as a .vbs file.
• Double-click it, or run cscript file.vbs.
• Use Dim, If, loops and MsgBox as the base.