title: VBA: Global Constant Strings
body: <p>I'm working with special characters for mathematics in Excel.<br>
  (Exponents⁴, GRΣΣK, and other misc Unicode characters.)</p>
  
  <p>I'd like to store commonly-used Unicode strings as global constants, since that would probably be significantly faster (and less bug-prone) than calling <code>CStr()</code> each time I need one.</p>
  
  <p>For example, I have these declarations outside all functions:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Public Const STRPOWER0        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2070)) '0th power
  Public Const STRPOWER1        As String = "¹" 'CStr(ChrW(&amp;HB9)) 1st power
  Public Const STRPOWER2        As String = "²" 'CStr(ChrW(&amp;HB2)) 2nd power
  Public Const STRPOWER3        As String = "³" 'CStr(ChrW(&amp;HB3)) 3rd power
  Public Const STRPOWER4        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2074)) '4th power
  Public Const STRPOWER5        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2075)) '5th power
  Public Const STRPOWER6        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2076)) '6th power
  Public Const STRPOWER7        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2077)) '7th power
  Public Const STRPOWER8        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2078)) '8th power
  Public Const STRPOWER9        As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H2079)) '9th power
  Public Const STRPOWERNEGATIVE As String = CStr(ChrW(&amp;H207B)) 'Superscript negative sign
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is, whenever I try to reference one of these strings, the value is <code>Empty</code><br>
  (If I turn on <code>Option Explicit</code> I get an error for <code>Variable not defined</code>)</p>
  
  <p>What am I doing wrong?<br>
  Does VBA not support global constants as strings?</p>