Introduction to VBA Macros

Here I am starting to introduce you to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro language. VBA is a key component. Excel users use VBA macros to customize and automate Excel. This chapter will teach you how to record macros and create simple macro procedures. In our subsequent chapters, we shall expand our lessons based on the topics in this chapter.

This article is part of my series: Excel VBA & Macros – A Step by Step Complete Guide.

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What is a Macro?

A macro is a sequence of instructions. This sequence of instructions automates some aspect of Excel you do regularly. When you’re automating some of your works in Excel using Macro, you can perform more efficiently and with fewer errors. For example, you may create a macro to format and print your month-end sales report. After the macro is developed, you can then execute the macro to perform many time-consuming procedures automatically.

A user doesn’t have to be a power user to create and use simple VBA macros. Casual users can simply turn on Excel’s macro recorder: Excel will record your actions and will convert them into a VBA macro. When you execute this macro, Excel performs the actions again.

Advanced users, though, can write code that tells Excel to perform tasks that can’t be recorded. For example, you can write procedures that display custom dialog boxes, or process data in a series of workbooks, and even create special-purpose add-ins.

Note: You may confuse VBA with VB (VB stands for Visual Basic). VB is a programming language. It lets you create executable programs (EXE files). Though VBA and VB have a lot in common, they are different programming languages.

In our next tutorials of this chapter, we shall dig into VBA macro very deeply. Keep in touch.

Happy Excelling 🙂