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The tutorials on VBA will include both videos and text. If you have feedback on either, please leave a post on our Forum or send us a mail.



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Introduction to VBA in Excel

Hello World

Our first encouter with VBA will be to display the familiar "Hello World" message using a button.

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titleHello World tutorial, text
  1. Choose the "Developer" tab and open the VBA editor. If you don't locate the "Developer" tab, follow this guide. The following window will then open.
  2. To write our first macro, choose "Instert" -> "Module".

  3. First, we will make a Sub procedure that we may later add to our button. All Sub procedures have to begin with Sub and end with End Sub. A Sub can not return a value, and may be compared with a program in other programming languages, where as a function is an alternative. We then call the MsgBox function to create a new window displaying our message.


  4. Lets now return to our Excel sheet to add the button. The insert button feature is shown in the image below.

    Info

    Tips: To align the size of the button with existing cells, hold down ALT while resizing. This applies to all sizings!


  5. A new window will open. Choose the "Hello World" macro we just created and click "OK".


  6. We may then rename our button by right-clicking on it and choosing "Edit text".



  7. Finally, we can test our macro by clicking on the button. A window displaying the message "Hello World!" should then open.
    If it does, congratulations! You have just made your first macro using VBA.


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titleHello World tutorial, video

Hello World video tutorial (no audio)


Recording a macro

Even though a lot of your work in VBA both can and will be made using only programming, it is highly recommended to get to know the Record Macro feature as well. When using Record Macro, VBA will track and translate every action you perform to code. This can help you in several ways:

  • It is always easier to start a task with some existing code instead of a blank sheet.
  • Use the fact that VBA translates all your actions into code to your advantage. Instead of searching online for e.i. how to mark a range of cells, try recording a macro doing it and then look at the code created.

Our first task will be to duplicate a sheet using the Record Macro feature.

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titleDuplicate sheet tutorial, text
  1. Make a simple sheet to duplicate.
  2. Locate the Developer tab, and click on Record Macro.
  3. A new window should then open. You always want to name your macros something meaningful, making it easy to understand what macro does by just the name. This applies especially when the number of macros increase. Click then OK.
  4. VBA is now recording our actions.
  5. To duplicate a sheet in Excel, right-click on the sheet name, and click on Move or Copy...
  6. In the window appearing, mark off for (move to end) on the location, and tick off for Create a copy. Click then OK.
  7. A duplicate has now been made.
  8. Time to stop the recording. This is done by clicking on Stop Recording, located the same place as the Record Macro was.
  9. To look at the code created by VBA, open the Visual Basic Editor.
  10. Open Module1, and the code is displayed.
  11. If we want to run the code again, we can click somewhere inside the subroutine DuplicateSheet() and then click on the play icon.
  12. Our Sheet1 is then duplicated again.
  13. If we wanted, we could also have made e.i. a button and attached our macro to it, just as in the Hello World tutorial.


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titleDuplicate sheet tutorial, video

DuplicateSheet video (no audio)




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