Chapter 3
The Anatomy of Macros
In This Chapter
Exploring the Excel Object Model
Leveraging variables in your Macros
Utilizing event procedures
Handling potential errors in your macros
The engine behind macros is VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). When you record a macro, Excel is busy writing the associated VBA behind the scenes. To fully understand macros, it’s important to understand the underlying VBA typically used in Excel macros.
This chapter starts you on that journey by giving you a primer on some of the objects, variables, events, and error handlers you will encounter in the macro examples found in this book.
An Overview of the Excel Object Model
Visual Basic for Applications is an object-oriented programming language. The basic concept of object-oriented programming is that a software application (Excel in this case) consists of various individual objects, each of which has its own set of features and uses. An Excel application contains cells, worksheets, charts, pivot tables, drawing shapes — the list of Excel's objects is seemingly endless. Each object has its own ...