Learn Macros In 19 Minutes (Microsoft Excel)

Excel data entry, formatting spreadsheets, report generation in Excel … these mundane tasks take up a huge amount of time in Excel and leave you feeling frustrated.

Imagine If you could conquer your Excel frustration and automate these tasks by doing them … instantly. In this beginner video, I introduce to the magic of Excel’s programming language: Visual Basic for Applications or 'VBA.'

EXCEL DOWNLOAD FILES LINK

WATCH NEXT

COPY DATA WITH EXCEL VBA (BEGINNER TO PRO!)

BEGINNER INTRODUCTION TO LOOPS IN EXCEL VBA

Click Here To Watch The video

00:00 INTRODUCTION TO EXCEL VBA

This video is not about writing VBA code from scratch – though we have many videos about that on the channel. Rather, it’s about helping you, as an Excel VBA beginner, to understand the unique impact of macros on your work. Ready to automate those repetitive tasks? Let’s get started.

00:38 GET SET UP FOR EXCEL VBA

Excel VBA is a skill that requires practice … so I challenge you to download the file and work along with me! The file is available for free with no email required. So go and grab it, unblock it (as I demonstrate in the video), and get ready for some Excel magic. This could be a career-changing exercise for you. Let’s go!

This task is based on real-world Excel VBA projects I’m doing for busy professionals all the time. The purpose of the task is to ‘slice up’ a dataset into a series of reports. Report generation can take ages and leave you frustrated – so how to do it at the click of a button?

03:21 SIMPLE DATA TRANSFER WITH EXCEL VBA

The first step is to learn how to do data transfer in Excel VBA. Beginners can get started with a simple a=b operation where a takes on the value of b. Experiment by putting a value into a cell. Try different cells, different values and different sheets. This ‘play’ is so important when learning Excel VBA as a beginner. You’re now programming simple automation in Excel with Excel macros – nice!

08:19 HOW TO CREATE SHEETS WITH EXCEL VBA

Next, a simple demonstration of the power of VBA. Creating worksheets in Excel (and deleting them!) can take a lot of time. In the video, I demonstrate an Excel macro that creates any number of sheets at the click of a button. And, we deal with how to delete them, too. So, even as a newcomer to Excel VBA, you can now use a macro to create a new sheet for a report in Excel. Cool!

We’ve now performed two simple operations with Excel VBA. But, to unleash the power of macros in Excel we must combine the VBA editor with worksheet features such as Excel formulae. The Excel download file includes a pre-prepared report template. Feel the power of automation by changing the report input and watching the outputs change … instantly. Excel VBA combining with other functions in Excel really is a thing of beauty!

11:00 USING OFFSET AND A LOOP

Inputting a single value to a spreadsheet is cool! But, what if you wanted to ‘loop through’ multiple input values. We deal with that next by learning about the most powerful concept in VBA (and in computer programming generally): loops. Follow along as I introduce you to loops in Excel VBA and test this powerful macro by stepping through it to understand how it works. ‘Stepping through’ macros in this way is a great way to build your understanding.

14:49 THE MACRO RECORDER AND A COMPLETE MACRO

Now you know how to create sheets, change cell values and loop actions multiple times, we’re ready to bring everything together in a powerful ‘click-of-a-button’ report creation routine. First, we discover Excel's macro recorder and use it to generate some tricky code to help us generate a PDF. Watch as I show you how everything works. I love this kind of synergy in Excel using Excel VBA. Once you get it working, don’t forget to punch the air!