Excel® VBA: 24-Hour Trainer

Chapter 8. Making Decisions with VBA

So far, all the macros you've created share a common trait of being executed line by line, starting with the very first line of code below the Sub name, and ending at the EndSub line. You might think that this is the very purpose of a VBA macro, for all its code lines to be run in sequence from start to finish. After all, isn't that why VBA code is in a macro in the first place?

It turns out that VBA can do a lot more with your macros than just serve the purpose of executing every line of code in them. You will encounter many instances when you'll need to guide the user into making a decision about whether to do one thing or another. There are also times when you will want VBA to just go ahead and make a decision about something, without any input from the user.

Depending on the decisions that get made during the course of a macro, you'll want VBA to execute only the code relating to the selected choice, while bypassing the alternative code relating to which choice was not selected. This lesson shows you how to ask the user for information when the situation calls for it, and also how to simply let VBA do the decision-making on the fly, in circumstances when the user does not even need to be involved in the decision process.

UNDERSTANDING LOGICAL OPERATORS

Logical operators are terms in VBA that you can use for evaluating or comparing a combination of individual expressions in order to make a decision in your macro, and for VBA to carry out the ...