Excel VBA Programming For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 10

Controlling Program Flow and Making Decisions

In This Chapter

Discovering methods for controlling the flow of your VBA routines

Finding out about the dreaded GoTo statement

Using If-Then and Select Case structures

Performing looping in your procedures

Some VBA procedures start at the code’s beginning and progress line by line to the end, never deviating from this top-to-bottom program flow. Macros that you record always work like this. In many cases, however, you need to control the flow of your code by skipping over some statements, executing some statements multiple times, and testing conditions to determine what the procedure does next. Hang on to your hat and enjoy the ride, because you’re about to discover the essence of programming.

Going with the Flow, Dude

Some programming newbies can’t understand how a dumb computer can make intelligent decisions. The secret is in several programming constructs that most programming languages support. Table 10-1 provides a quick summary of these constructs. (I explain all of these later in this chapter.)

Table 10-1 Programming ...