VBA form - Returning a textbox object to be manipulated - forms

Question

I'm creating a game in a vba form. Right now it creates an array 9x9 of textboxes and fills and disables the textboxes with the given information for the game. When creating the textboxes I named them "fieldx-y" so I could look them up easily. I want to somehow put them into an array so that I can look them up like field(x,y) and then do things to them like change the background color of the textbox or change information in it.
Here is the function I wanted to use to find the object using its name and return it to be manipulated.
Public Function getField(x As Integer, y As Integer) As MSForms.TextBox
Dim field As MSForms.TextBox
For Each field In Me.Controls
If Right(field.Name, 1) = y And Left(Right(field.Name, 3), 1) = x Then
getField = field
End If
Next
End Function
And here is how I would like to manipulate it from my userform initialize sub
getField(5,5).Enabled=False
I'm sure I must be doing something very wrong and it's probably because of my lacking understanding of OOP and vba.
Thanks

Answer 1

Since you have chosen a predictable naming convention you can call these controls directly using your naming convention. There is no need to loop through all the controls. Also, I changed your fieldx-y to fieldx_y because - is an illegal character variable names.
Public Function getField(x As Integer, y As Integer) As MSForms.TextBox
set getField = me.controls("field" & x & "_" & y)
End Function

Answer 2

If all you are doing is enabling the control, then you may not actually need to return the textbox, in which case do not add the tb variable to the calling procedure, and change your function to a sub, like:
Public Sub getField(x As Integer, y As Integer)
Dim field As MSForms.TextBox
For Each field In Me.Controls
If Right(field.Name, 1) = y And Left(Right(field.Name, 3), 1) = x Then
'## Disable this textbox
field.Enabled = False
Exit For
End If
Next
End Sub
If you do need to return a textbox to the calling procedure, then do this:
In your calling procedure, you need an object variable to represent the returned MSForms.TextBox:
Dim tb as MSForms.TextBox
Set tb = getField(5,5)
tb.Enabled = False
Then in your function routine, because it is an object, you need the Set keyword:
Set getField = field
Exit For '## You need to escape the loop otherwise it will keep going, giving undesired results.