Excel VBA Programming - Getting Started | 1 - Introduction
Summary
TLDRJoin software engineer Boris Passkiver as he introduces you to Excel VBA programming in this comprehensive guide. Designed for beginners, the course covers the basics of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), an object-oriented language used to automate tasks in Microsoft Office applications like Excel. You'll learn to write macros, create custom functions, react to user events, and more. With VBA, you can enhance your productivity, reduce redundancy, and even grow your technical skills in a familiar work environment. Get ready to dive into VBA and transform your Excel workflow.
Takeaways
- 📘 VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications, an object-oriented programming language integrated within the Microsoft Office ecosystem.
- 👋 The course is designed for complete beginners with basic Excel knowledge, even those unfamiliar with programming concepts.
- 🛠️ VBA is used to automate tasks in Microsoft Office applications, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook.
- 🔁 VBA excels at handling repetitive tasks, performing the same operations across multiple spreadsheets, workbooks, or rows.
- 💡 With VBA, you can create custom Excel functions that aren't available by default in the application.
- 🔑 VBA can react to user events, such as opening a workbook or entering data into a cell, to trigger actions dynamically.
- 📊 VBA enables the creation of custom user interfaces, known as user forms, to streamline data input and reduce errors.
- 🤝 Although not covered in the course, VBA can facilitate communication between different Office applications.
- 🌐 VBA is a valuable skill with a long lifespan, supported in Windows versions of Excel through 2036.
- 📈 Learning VBA can enhance productivity, provide an introduction to programming, and is beneficial in various industries, including finance.
- 📚 The prerequisites for the course include participation, experimentation, and an intermediate knowledge of Excel, along with basic understanding of data types.
Q & A
What is the full form of VBA?
-VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications, which is an object-oriented programming language used to automate tasks in Microsoft Office applications.
Who is the instructor of the 'Excel VBA Programming the Complete Guide' course?
-The instructor of the course is Boris Passkiver, a software engineer based in New York City.
What is the prerequisite for learning VBA according to the script?
-The prerequisite for learning VBA is a little bit of basic Excel knowledge, and the course is designed for complete beginners.
What is the purpose of VBA in the context of Microsoft Office applications?
-VBA is used to automate tasks in Microsoft Office applications like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, and more by using code snippets called procedures or macros.
How can VBA help in reducing the redundancy of an Excel workflow?
-VBA can help by performing repetitive sequences of steps automatically, creating custom Excel functions, reacting to user events, and rendering custom user interfaces, thus reducing manual effort and the potential for errors.
What are some of the common Excel functionalities that the script suggests one should be familiar with before starting VBA?
-The script suggests familiarity with common functionalities like changing font size, navigating across spreadsheets, opening and saving workbooks, and basic functions such as SUMIF, COUNTIF, and VLOOKUP.
Why is it recommended to have an intermediate knowledge of Excel before learning VBA?
-An intermediate knowledge of Excel is recommended because VBA deals with interacting with existing Excel functionalities, and understanding these functionalities will make it easier to write code to manipulate them.
What is the historical connection between VBA and the BASIC programming language?
-VBA is a modern dialect of the BASIC language, which dates back to the 1960s. VBA is inspired by the syntax and logic of BASIC but is a completely different language.
What version of Excel is recommended for the course, and why?
-Excel 2016 for Windows is recommended because it is the latest version at the time of the course recording, and it offers the least likelihood of running into errors and compatibility issues.
Why is Excel for Mac not supported for this VBA course?
-Excel for Mac is not supported because there are major differences between the Windows and Mac versions of Excel, especially in terms of VBA support, which makes it challenging to cover both platforms in the same course.
What is the importance of participation and experimentation when learning VBA from the course?
-Participation and experimentation are crucial because writing code oneself is the best way to learn. It involves trying different things, making mistakes, and dealing with bugs, which accelerates the learning process.
Outlines
📘 Introduction to Excel VBA Programming
Boris Passkiver, a software engineer, introduces the course on Excel VBA programming, an object-oriented programming language within the Microsoft Office ecosystem. Aimed at beginners, the course covers the basics of programming, the concept of object-oriented programming, and the automation of tasks in Office applications through VBA. It highlights the use of VBA for repetitive tasks, creating custom Excel functions, responding to user events, and custom user interfaces. The potential for VBA to communicate between different Office applications is also mentioned, emphasizing the value of learning VBA for productivity and as a stepping stone into programming.
🛠 Benefits and History of Learning VBA
The second paragraph discusses the advantages of learning VBA, such as enhancing productivity, introducing programming concepts within a familiar environment, and its value in the job market with a guaranteed presence until 2036. The history of VBA is traced back to its roots in BASIC and its evolution through Visual Basic, with the first version of VBA released in 1994 with Excel 5. The paragraph also emphasizes the importance of hands-on experience and experimentation in learning VBA effectively.
📝 Course Prerequisites and Technical Requirements
The final paragraph outlines the prerequisites for the VBA course, including the necessity of a working copy of Microsoft Excel, with a recommendation for Excel 2016 due to its features and support for VBA. It advises against using outdated versions or Excel for Mac due to compatibility issues. The paragraph also suggests intermediate knowledge of Excel and familiarity with common functions and features, as well as a basic understanding of data types, to get the most out of the course. The importance of active participation and trying out different coding scenarios is reiterated.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡VBA
💡Object-Oriented Programming
💡Macros
💡Automation
💡Custom Functions
💡Events
💡User Forms
💡Technical Skills
💡Programming
💡Data Types
💡Prerequisites
Highlights
Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as a powerful tool in the Microsoft Office ecosystem.
VBA is an object-oriented programming language designed for beginners with basic Excel knowledge.
VBA automates tasks in Microsoft Office applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook.
Explanation of VBA procedures or macros as sequences of steps to instruct the computer.
VBA's capability to replicate processes across multiple worksheets and workbooks efficiently.
Creating custom Excel functions with VBA to meet specific project or business needs.
VBA's ability to react dynamically to user events like opening a workbook or entering data in a cell.
Utilizing VBA to render custom user interfaces, reducing errors and enhancing data input control.
VBA's potential for cross-application communication, though not covered in the course.
The importance of learning VBA to reduce redundancy in Excel workflows and enhance productivity.
VBA as a gateway to growing technical skills and an introduction to computer programming within a familiar environment.
VBA's value as an introductory programming tool due to pre-existing Excel knowledge.
Microsoft's commitment to supporting VBA in Windows versions of Excel through 2036.
The historical development of VBA from its roots in the BASIC language of the 1960s.
Technical requirements for the course, emphasizing the need for a working copy of Microsoft Excel.
Recommendation for intermediate Excel knowledge and familiarity with common functions for course participation.
The necessity of hands-on participation and experimentation for effective learning of VBA.
Course prerequisites and the importance of trying different things and not being afraid to encounter bugs.
Transcripts
hi there and welcome to excel VBA programming the complete guide my name is Boris passkiver and I'm
a software engineer based in New York City and I'm really excited to introduce you to one of the most
powerful tools available in the Microsoft Office ecosystem Visual Basic for applications so what
is Visual Basic for applications Visual Basic for applications also known by the popular acronym VBA
is an object oriented programming language now if you're unfamiliar with programming if you've never
written a line of code before if the term object oriented is unfamiliar to you that's totally fine
this course is designed for complete beginners all you need is a little bit of basic Excel knowledge
with that said we know from popular culture that programming is the idea of giving instructions to
the computer a sequence of steps for the computer to follow in order to execute some kind of task
when it comes to VBA VBA is used to automate tasks in Microsoft Office applications like Excel word
PowerPoint access Outlook and more VBA consists of Snippets of code that we call procedures or macros
some people also call them subroutines routines or programs all essentially different names for the
same thing but all of these Snippets of code are just sequences of Steps step one do this step two
do this step three do this imagine that you have a real life scenario where you want to explain to
a co-worker how to perform some kind of process in Excel like modifying a daily report you might
call them over and say the first thing I need to do is to highlight all of the headers in our top
row and make them bold then change the font to this font change the font size to this perhaps
add a border next at the bottom of the worksheet I want to perform a sum calculation on all of the
columns perhaps after that I want to add a chart or a table or a pivot table and then let's say
they replicate this entire process across multiple worksheets across multiple workbooks the exact
same way that you describe this office process to a co-worker is the exact same way that we're going
to describe it to VBA we're just going to use a different syntax a different language in order
to communicate with the computer but anything that you can do in Excel in the main interface you can
tell VBA to do with code so what can VBA help you do in Excel well VBA is really great at repetition
it can help you perform the exact same operation on multiple spreadsheets or multiple workbooks
or multiple rows whenever you need to execute a repetitive sequence of steps let's say you run a
report daily or weekly or monthly or every hour whenever you find yourself doing the exact same
process over and over again you can write a macro that's going to automate the process of
completing all those steps in order VBA can also help you to create brand new Excel functions to
use in the main Excel application by default Excel 2016 includes over 400 functions but perhaps you
need a custom function for your project or your business needs or your company you can actually
use VBA to create brand new Excel functions you can also use VBA to react dynamically to events
like user interactions what do I mean by user events well imagine things like the user opening
a workbook or creating a brand new worksheet or even entering or deleting a value in a Cell all
of these things are called events they shoot off at a given moment in time when something occurs we
can actually use VBA to dynamically react to those events to do something when they occur for example
we can trigger a workbook to save whenever the user enters a value into a cell we can also use
VBA to render custom user interfaces we call these things user forms and they resemble very much like
a real life web form where we have inputs we may have radio buttons or buttons to click or check
boxes to check and after the user completes the user form we can take the data that they provided
and use it to modify the worksheet somehow it's a really great approach for reducing the
total amount of errors that the user can commit and asking them to submit their data in a much
more controlled environment finally although it's not covered in the course VBA can also be used to
communicate between different office applications so for example if you want to use Outlook the
email app to send an email to every single email that's listed let's say in a spreadsheet you can
do that and although this course doesn't cover a cross app communication as soon as you understand
the basics of how VBA Works in Excel it's a lot easier to apply this concept to other office apps
and especially make them communicate with each other so why learn VBA well as I mentioned VBA
reduces the redundancy of your Excel workflow just about everybody uses Excel from time to
time whether it's for professional reasons or for personal reasons like calculating your personal
finances or even calculating Sports statistics Microsoft Office is installed on over 750 million
computers worldwide so Excel is a really really popular spreadsheet application the most popular
one in the world and it's highly likely you're going to be working with it from time to time so
why not pick up a skill that's going to help make you more productive and more automated within it
VBA will grow your technical skills as a general Excel user and as a business analyst if you've
reached a threshold in your knowledge of excel if you're wondering what's the next best thing that
I can pick up within this application to make me a more productive employee VBA is undoubtedly the
number one answer there is no other tool available within any Office application that will give you
as much power as VBA VBA also offers an excellent introduction to computer computer programming in
a familiar work environment now I mentioned earlier that you don't have to know anything
about programming to start this course if you are interested in learning programming for the first
time and you picked up another language outside of EBA you usually have to learn a lot of things to
get started you have to learn the context in which the language operates you might have to pick up a
brand new text editor it's a lot harder to get started with something from scratch the great
thing about VBA is that most users have at least some basic knowledge of Excel how we enter values
how we enter functions the general purpose of a spreadsheet and because you have that pre-existing
knowledge you have a really strong foundation and a lot of the complicated things that you'd
have to learn in other programming languages you don't have to learn here you can just focus on
the brand new Concepts within the context of something that is already very familiar to you
finally VBA remains a valuable skill in today's job market Microsoft itself has said that VBA will
be around in Windows versions of excel through 2036 that's 20 years from now so this isn't going
anywhere it's here to stay and it's used a lot across many different Industries including uh
Finance so it's an incredibly valuable skill but even if you don't work with excel in your
day-to-day job it's an incredibly amazing thing that you can pick up as a general Excel user
I want to take a brief moment here to discuss the history of VBA VBA is a modern dialect of
a language called basic that goes back all the way to the 1960s the two are completely
different languages VBA is just inspired by the syntax and logic of basic that's what we mean by
modern dialect in 1991 Microsoft released the visual basic programming language for Windows
that's also a completely separate language that's used to build Standalone desktop applications on
windows so the important thing that I want to emphasize here is that basic Visual Basic and
Visual Basic for applications are three completely different things in 1994 Microsoft released the
first version of VBA Visual Basic for applications with Excel 5. so again VBA was inspired by Visual
Basic which itself was inspired by basic but VBA can only be used within the context of existing
office applications it can't be used to develop something outside of an off Office application so
key takeaway both VB and VBA are inspired by basic but they are completely different languages I also
want to provide a really cool throwback here this is actually what Excel looked like back in 1995
the very first version in which VBA was introduced as I look at this I'm kind of surprised because as
much as it looks a little bit dated aesthetically some of the things are not as stylish as they are
in today's version of excel what I'm really most surprised by is how much things haven't changed I
feel like if I had to dive back into this version of Excel and use it for my day-to-day spreadsheet
needs I don't think it would be that difficult to just go into this one and use it as well so it's
really cool to observe how 20 years have Excel development have led us here about how a lot
of those common elements remain the same even in this piece of software that is almost 20 years old
all right so let's dive into the prerequisites for the course before I dive into the technical
requirements I want to really emphasize the importance of participation and experimentation
no matter how many tutorials you watch there really is no substitute for writing code yourself
you have to be willing to try out different things yourself you have to be willing to make
mistakes you have to be willing to deal with the frustration of running into a bug and having to
Google it and reading responses on stack Overflow and the like no matter how effective a course is
no matter how many video tutorials or quizzes or assignments there are the single best way to
learn is to try things out yourself so I strongly recommend regardless of your Excel knowledge or
your programming knowledge whenever you watch a video in this course copy the code alongside in
your own version of excel make sure you're not just watching make sure you're participating
and then after the video is done try out something different try an alternate syntax don't be afraid
to fail don't be afraid to run into bugs that's the quickest way to learn now as far as the
technical requirements you do need a working copy of Microsoft Excel the good news is that VBA is
pre-installed with Excel so if Excel is working on your computer there's nothing more that you
need to install or to purchase or to configure we're all good to go for this course I strongly
recommend Excel 2016 for Windows as of right now at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 when
this course is being recorded this is still the latest version of excel backwards compatibility
issues are always possible this won't be an issue with different versions of windows but may be an
issue with different versions of excel so if you have a more dated version of excel especially
something really old like 2003 or 2007 versions versions that are more than a decade old I do
recommend investing a little bit and getting the most recent version it is worth the upgrade there
are a lot of brand new features introduced and that will ensure the least likelihood for running
into errors and backwards compatibility issues as you proceed throughout the course I want to point
out that Excel for Mac is not supported as much as Microsoft has tried the there's still a lot of
major staggering differences between the windows version and the Mac version the Mac version really
isn't great for VBA it has a slightly different interface and it's just too much of a challenge
to have to do deal with two different videos to do the exact same thing on two different Platforms in
addition Microsoft's also office offers Excel on things like iPad and iPhone and an office web app
in your browser but none of those versions support VBA so they're also not covered by the course
for this course I also recommend an intermediate knowledge of excel I don't want to put any strict
constraints on you I don't want to say things like you need to know this function or this number of
functions or this functionality but essentially all this means is this won't be your first time
using Excel you should have some familiarity with this application with what it's used for with some
of its most common functionalities you should know how to change basic things like the font size how
to navigate across different spreadsheets how to open workbooks and save them those basic common
beginner operations should all be very comfortable to you I do recommend a general knowledge of
really common functions like sumif countif and vlookup this will come really handy and of course
a little bit of experimentation with things like pivot tables charts and graphs you don't have to
know every detail you don't have to know how to create you know two axes on a graph or all of the
Nitty Gritty details of the pivot table but just a little bit of familiarity with these things if
you're if you've never played around with any of these Excel features I do recommend spending some
time with a general Excel course before diving into VBA VBA deals with interacting with a lot
of these existing Excel functionalities so if you don't know them it's going to be hard to
write code to deal with them finally I recommend a basic knowledge of data types so you should be
able to know the difference between a number and text or even as a more complicated example between
an integer versus a floating Point number the more data types you know for example dates or booleans
or in programming terms things like arrays the easier the course will be to pick up for
you but again as I mentioned you don't need any concrete knowledge of programming to get started
that's all there is to cover in this lesson I'm really excited to teach you how to use VBA it's
one of the most powerful things you can learn within an office application to help you automate
your workflow I really hope you're excited as well and in the next lesson we'll begin
our journey into VBA by enabling the developer tab within Excel which will allow us to actually
interact with visual basics for applications hope you're excited and I'll see you there
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