Book Image

VBA Automation for Excel 2019 Cookbook

By : Mike Van Niekerk
Book Image

VBA Automation for Excel 2019 Cookbook

By: Mike Van Niekerk

Overview of this book

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language developed by Microsoft to automate tasks in MS Office applications. This book will help you to focus on the essential aspects of your role by automating mundane tasks in Excel and other Office applications. With comprehensive coverage of VBA delivered in the form of practice problems and bite-sized recipes, this book will help you to hit the ground running. Unlike most books that assume prior programming experience, this book starts with the fundamentals and gradually progresses to solving bigger problems. You’ll start by becoming familiar with VBA so that you can start recording macros right away. With this foundation in place, you’ll advance to using the full capabilities of the language as you apply loops, functions, and custom dialog boxes to design your own automation programs. You'll also get to grips with embedded macros and other advanced tools to enhance productivity and explore topics relating to app performance and security. Throughout this VBA book, you’ll cover multiple practice projects in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint while exploring tips and best practices to hone your skills. By the end of this book, you’ll have developed the skills you need to use VBA to create your own programs that control MS Office applications.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

Investigating VBA code

In this recipe, we will inspect a short VBA subroutine. Like all programming languages, VBA has a specific syntax, and the best way to understand the principles is to see what the coding looks like.

What we're going to see here will lay the foundation for the other recipes in this book, so pay close attention.

Getting ready

In order to investigate and edit VBA code in Excel, or any of the other Office applications, we first need to activate the Developer toolbar. Here are the steps:

  1. Open MS Excel and select Blank workbook from the opening screen.
  2. Open the 01_VBA_Code.xlsm sample file. Click on [Enable Content] on the SECURITY WARNING ribbon.
  3. If the Developer ribbon is not visible, activate the Backstage View by clicking on File, which will display the following screen:

    Figure 1.1 – The Backstage View

  4. From the category list on the left, select the last option, Options. The Excel Options dialog box appears:

    Figure 1.2 –...