select multiple figures in a series using excel visual basic - vba

Question

Using excel visual basic, I want to select multiple figures and group them, repeatedly.
My code goes like this:
circleCnt = 5
For j = 1 To circleCnt
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeOval, 500, 30, 40, 30).Select
Selection.ShapeRange.Height = minWidth + circleWidth * (circleCnt - j + 1)
Selection.ShapeRange.Width = minWidth + circleWidth * (circleCnt - j + 1)
Selection.ShapeRange.IncrementLeft circleWidth / 2 * (j - 1) + circleWidth / 2
Selection.ShapeRange.IncrementTop circleWidth / 2 * (j - 1) + circleWidth / 2
Next j
Yep, it's drawing multiple circles and I'm trying to present my data with these codes. The problem is... my full data makes more than a hundred group of circles and it takes forever to transfer all the circles into the powerpoint
I want to make circles from a sample into a group - and how can I select multiple shape objects? I was thinking like
for n = 1 to 5
select shape #n
next n
but as you can see, this didn't work
Is there any 'cumulative' code for selection? or selecting last object and make them into a group of previously grouped objects?
-I don't want to make 'all circles' into one group - a group for a sample, with multiple samples :)

Answer 1

After you add the shapes, you need to iterate over all the shapes on the sheet and store the shape names in an array. Using that, you can create a ShapeRange object and Group the shapes. Here is a code sample:
Sub GroupAllShapes()
Dim arrShapeNames() As Variant 'must be Variant to work with Shapes.Range()
Dim shp As Shape
Dim sr As ShapeRange
Dim ws As Worksheet
Dim i As Integer
Set ws = ActiveSheet
ReDim arrShapeNames(ws.Shapes.Count - 1)
i = 0
For Each shp In ws.Shapes
arrShapeNames(i) = shp.Name
i = i + 1
Next
Set sr = ws.Shapes.Range(arrShapeNames)
sr.Group
Set sr = Nothing
Set ws = Nothing
End Sub
Note: I ported this from some of my C# code and have the arrShapeNames array with a zero-based index. You may need to make it 1-based for VBA.

Answer 2

Try to avoid selecting anything in your code. This makes your code really slow. It's not entirely clear for me what you're trying to do, but try something like this:
dim objShape as Shape
for j = 1 To circleCnt
set objShape = Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeOval, 500, 30, 40, 30)
With objShape
.ShapeRange.Height = minWidth + circleWidth * (circleCnt - j + 1)
.ShapeRange.Width = minWidth + circleWidth * (circleCnt - j + 1)
.ShapeRange.IncrementLeft circleWidth / 2 * (j - 1) + circleWidth / 2
.ShapeRange.IncrementTop circleWidth / 2 * (j - 1) + circleWidth / 2
End With
next
set objShape = Nothing