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)

Chapter 4: Working with Procedures

A good starting point for this chapter would be to help you understand what a procedure is.

When recording a macro, Excel captures every action you take. Each step is stored in the VBA Editor in a specific text form, or a little program. The correct term for these recorded lines of code is a procedure. When recording a macro, your actions in Excel are stored in a VBA procedure.

A procedure, therefore, is a block of statements. It starts with a particular declaration statement and ends with an End declaration. When you then run the macro, the procedure carries out whatever task you recorded.

Macros are useful on an elementary level. To make the most of VBA, you need to know how to write procedures manually.

VBA distinguishes between Sub procedures and Function procedures. We will investigate both procedures to help you understand the difference, role, and function of each. Naming conventions become important here and are explained in detail...