Introduction to Excel VBA

In this topic we will understand the basics in Excel VBA. What can we do with Excel VBA? How it helps us with MS Excel.

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Introduction to Excel VBA

EXCEL VBA is the acronym for Visual Basicfor Applications. It is an integration of the Microsoft’s event-driven programming language Visual Basic with Microsoft Office Applications such as Microsoft Excel. Excel VBA is a programming language for MS Excel Application. It allows you to automate the task which you are doing manually and repeatedly. Most of the times, we do the same kind of tasks daily in our daily work, you can automate it using VBA.

We can use Excel VBA for:

§  automating the repeated tasks

§  automating hourly, daily,weekly,monthly or yearly generated reports

§  preparing rich and interactive Excel Dashboards

§  connecting to various database to get the data and prepare the reports

§  building  the automated tools

§  interacting with other applications, including MS Office Tools using API

§  doing many more things using VBA based on your data and requirement

FOR EXAMPLE

» We fetch some data from different sources like database by using sql language and paste it in a worksheet and doing some manipulations and then we will format it and generate Automated Report

» We may extract some data from other file system like csv etc… to an Excel sheet, and then we will clean the data and create some reports and send through email..

» Many of us do the similar kind of work daily; there may be some change in the data but not the structure of the data, using vba to process steps which execute to deliver the output.

VBA HELPS…

§  avoid doing the same things manually & repeatedly

§  save the process time by automating the tasks

§  generate the interactive reports quickly

§  develop the tools for the organization

§  automate any Office Tool and Other Applications

§  save project execution time and spend the time on exploring the new things or technologies

WE CAN USE VBA IN 2 DIFFERENT WAYS:

1. By Recording a Macro: You can record a macro for simple tasks, using Record Macro utilities provided in Excel, you do not need any programming skills to record a macro.

2. By VBA Programming: You can write VBA programming in VBE (Visual Basic Environment) Editor to automate any task. It requires VBA programming skills and you can automate simple to complex level tasks

In these basic tutorials, we focus on the first method, Recording Macro for automation.

You can learn VBA Programming and Advanced Techniques to do more using VBA.