In this video we will be introducing Visual Basic for applications and giving an overview of when we
might be able to use it particularly within Excel.
And so this begs the question what is VBA Microsoft uses VBA or Visual Basic for applications as its
primary programming language.
So VBA lets you develop custom programs or features and build them into existing Microsoft applications
like Excel.
It can be used to simplify complex tasks or equations.
It can automate time consuming processes and it can improve the quality and accuracy of various reporting
systems so it can be very useful within Microsoft products.
A lot of times when we start talking about programming languages and custom functionality it can seem
a bit overwhelming and intimidating particularly if you have no previous coding experience.
So the nice thing about visual basic is that since it isn't intended to write for sophisticated programs
but is rather meant to enhance existing programs it is relatively simple it's easy to learn and it's
much more user friendly than other programming languages might be.
So once you learn how to code in VBA it becomes easy to fall into the mindset of using VBA for everything
because it's quick it's easy to implement and it's accurate but there are a few things need to keep
in mind when it comes to VBA and when you're trying to determine whether or not you should implement
a VBA solution first we can talk about the pros VBA will always perform the same exact way because it's
a code based system which inherently means it's consistent and it's accurate.
Again because you're letting the system perform the work for you you're limiting the opportunity you
have for human error to get involved.
It's also about a simplified user interface.
So even someone who doesn't necessarily understand the full task can come in and use your user interface
to accomplish complex tasks.
And it also saves resources usually the system itself will perform complex time consuming tasks in a
matter of minutes which obviously has huge cost savings and time savings potential.
Lastly when you're working within the confines of an existing program like excel there are things that
seem impossible to accomplish or with the full customised ability of VBA.
There's actually nothing that's impossible you can do almost anything if you have a good understanding
of VBA so there's obviously a lot of pros to using VBA.
So now we can talk about the cons the major con is that you have to know VBA to use it.
And again like we mentioned before it's actually very easy to learn and it's very simple compared to
other programming languages but there is a learning curve involved in the beginning and you do need
to understand VBA before you can implement VBA solutions just like we mentioned VBA is always consistent
and it's always accurate cheating the correct level of accuracy often involves a lot of debugging and
testing which can sometimes be complex it can sometimes be challenging and we're going to talk about
that in a future video.
Microsoft also occasionally releases updates to its programs like Excel or PowerPoint and those updates
aren't always compatible with previously written macros.
So when Microsoft releases an update you do need to recheck your macro and recheck your code and will
potentially have to make some updates to make sure it still runs correctly.
The last thing is you can't actually have a shareable workbook if you're using Excel and VBA.
My recommendation if you're trying to use a shared file and have multiple people on the file at the
same time but also implement VBA solutions to automate processes and reduce error would be to turn to
Microsoft Access which is much more capable of handling multiple user interface.
So in conclusion Visual Basic for applications is a really strong tool to know how to use and it's not
terribly difficult to learn.
The only thing we should consider before implementing a VBA solution is whether or not there might be
simpler non code based solutions to the same problem.
Oftentimes when we turn to VBA it's to accomplish something that seems initially impossible or to automate
what is a time consuming and tedious process.
So in this video we talked about what Visual Basic for applications is and how we might be able to use
VBA which is what the duration of this course will be about.