An Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications

Visual Basic for Applications is also known as VBA and is a programming language that comes with Microsoft Office. It is used to extend or enhance the functionality of the Microsoft Office Applications. The way it works is that Visual Basic for Applications or VBA has a basic set of commands you can use in each Microsoft Office Program, so no matter which program you are using, the commands will work. A sample of these commands are:

• Msgbox
• Select Case
• If Then End if
  
• Dim 
  
• Inputbox

However, each program also has its own commands peculiar to that program. For example, in Excel you need to know how to refer to a cell on a worksheet, this obviously only applies to Excel as no other application has cells in a worksheet. In Word there is a command that specifically refers to a sentence. So in order to learn about Visual Basic for Applications you first need to choose a Microsoft Office Application (such as Word or Excel) to start with, the most common application used is Microsoft Excel.

You then need to be introduced to the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) which is where you will write your Visual Basic for Applications code or programming statements. Once you understand how the Visual Basic Editor works for one Microsoft Office Application, you will be able to use it in the same way for all the Microsoft Office Applications, thus you don’t have to learn that again and once you learn the Visual Basic commands that are common between all Microsoft Office Applications you will have a foundation for the other applications as well.

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