An object is early bound when it is assigned to a variable declared to be of a specific object type . Early bound objects allow the compiler to allocate memory and perform other optimizations before an application executes. ‘ Create a variable to hold a new object. Dim FS As FileStream ‘ Assign a new object to the variable. FS = New FileStream(”C:\tmp.txt”, FileMode.Open) By contrast, an object is late bound when it is assigned to a variable declared to be of type Object. Objects of this type can hold references to any object, but lack many of the advantages of early-bound objects. Dim xlApp As Object xlApp = CreateObject(”Excel.Application”)