{"id":2,"date":"2014-01-16T23:56:25","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T06:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coetoolbox\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2016-08-22T13:01:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T20:01:32","slug":"vba","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coetoolbox\/vba\/","title":{"rendered":"Excel VBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"What is VBA?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Visual Basic for Applications, VBA, is a programming language included with MS Office. VBA is a fairly simple programming language, but it has most of the components of other larger languages: classes, objects and events, and a visual environment for development (VBE). For this reason VBA is a good\u00a0programming language to learn (or at least very good one to start learning).<\/p>\n

Why VBA?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MS Excel is the most used spreadsheet application in businesses and as an OR practitioner you will use it frequently. Coding in VBA allows you to automate, simplify and customize tasks. Therefore, knowing how to use VBA for Excel modeling and applications development is valuable\u00a0skill in any company.<\/p>\n

What is a Macro?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MS Excel consists \u000bof a number of objects,<\/span> or named parts of a computer\u2019s memory. Objects have properties<\/span>, and methods<\/span> that manipulate these properties. A macro<\/span> is a collection of instructions for the computer to handle these Excel objects. It is a small computer program that runs within MS Office.<\/p>\n

Getting Started<\/h2>\n

Before starting you need to set up the developer tab and the security settings:<\/p>\n

Developer Tab<\/strong>: Here you can access the Visual Basic Editor and other developer tools.<\/p>\n

\"Excel<\/p>\n

Office 2010 does not display the Developer tab by default: you must enable it yourself.<\/p>\n