Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Types of Tasks

You can perform several broad categories of tasks with the Visual Basic language. Since we’re talking about Visual Basic (not Excel), these tasks tend to be very general. More specific tasks are usually handled through Excel objects.

I’ve organized this chapter so the simplest tasks are first. By the end, things get pretty advanced, so if you feel overwhelmed at any point, feel free to come back later—you may just need some time to digest these concepts. Table 3-1 organizes the sections in this chapter to give you a bit of an overview .

Table 3-1. An overview of Visual Basic programming tasks

Category	Section	Overview
Users	Interact with Users	Use simple dialog boxes to get or display information.
Data	Do Math	Perform calculations.
	Work with Text	Compose and modify strings of text.
	Get Dates and Times	Get current dates and times and perform calculations on dates and times.
Storage	Read and Write Files	Open, read, write, and close files stored on disk.
Expressions	Check Results	Find what kind of data was returned by an operation.
	Find Truth	Combine expressions to create complex conditions.
	Compare Bits	Get multiple pieces of information from a single value.
Interoperate	Run Other Applications	Exchange data with other Windows applications.
Compiler	Control the Compiler	Create debug and release versions of code within the same source file.