In strait Visual Basic, this is pretty simple: Eighter you are in execution or in design.
In VBA, things are a bit different. Since VBA is an "in-process" extention to a program (thus uses the same memory space as the application) one could say that VBA programs are alwaise runing. The best exemple of this is that in VBA, the immidiate window works all the time. Public variables are accessible at anytime once you have written the line that declares them.
In this case, Design mode is entered and exited as actions in the VBA editor. This means that when doing changes to your VBA project, you are temporarly in design mode. Once you execute anything, use a macro or the immidiate window, you instantly exit design mode.
In other words, VBA enters Design mode for all changes made, and exits it at all other time.
To conclude, in VBA, it is a button/function that tells you if your variables are "alive" (not in design mode) or "dead" (design mode).
I know this is not as clear has I would have liked it to be, but its a try... Hope this helps.
