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)

Using the VBA Editor

We've worked with the VBA Editor before, but that was on another file, with a different Sub procedure. The recipe we're going to work with here will show you how to activate the VBA Editor in your own file. Furthermore, we're going to identify various components within the editor.

Getting ready

With 02_RecordMacro.xlsx still open, we're going to activate the VBA Editor. Whether you are on Sheet1, Sheet2, or Sheet3 is of no consequence, because the macro is part of the workbook.

How to do it…

Let's go through the steps for this recipe:

  1. The standard way to activate the VBA Editor is to navigate to Developer | Code | Macros, and then select Edit on the Macro dialog box.
  2. The shortcut key makes life much easier. Simply hold down the Alt key while pressing F11. This time, you bypass the dialog box by going straight to the VBA Editor:

Figure 1.15 – A Sub procedure in the VBA Editor...