Excel 2013 Formulas

Chapter 23: Introducing VBA

In This Chapter

• An introduction to VBA

• How to use the Visual Basic Editor

• How to work in the code windows of the Visual Basic Editor

This chapter introduces you to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). VBA is Excel's programming language, and it is used to create macros and custom worksheet functions that you can use in formulas. Creating worksheet functions is the focus of this and the next three chapters. Before you can create custom functions by using VBA, you need to have some basic background knowledge of VBA as well as some familiarity with the Visual Basic Editor.

About VBA

VBA is best thought of as Microsoft's common application scripting language. VBA is included with most Office applications, and it's also available in applications from other vendors. In Excel, VBA has two primary uses:

• Automating spreadsheet tasks

• Creating custom functions that you can use in your worksheet formulas

Excel also includes another way of creating custom functions by using the XLM macro language. XLM is pretty much obsolete, but it is still supported for compatibility purposes. This book completely ignores the XLM language and focuses on VBA. By the way, the XLM macro language has absolutely nothing to do with XML, which is a mark-up language for storing structured data.

VBA is a complex topic — far too complex to be covered completely in this book. ...