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In this video we're going to walk through how to set up your Excel file to allow the use of Visual Basic

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or VBA so you can building custom features and functionality that you wouldn't be able to access otherwise.

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So the first thing we need to do is activate the developer tab and you can see up here in the top of

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my screen and my ribbon.

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I don't have a developer tab currently shown you can only see the general basic tabs that Excel starts

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you off with the developer tab is what houses all of the VBA functionality and its interface within

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Excel.

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So we're definitely going to need to activate that in order to do so.

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We're going to go to file and then go down to options and depending on which version of Excel you're

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using your options might be placed a little bit differently on your screen but it should take you to

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the same place which is this options window that pops up and you can control a lot of the different

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ways Excel behaves in this window.

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But for now we're primarily interested in the customized ribbon option that you see here.

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So go ahead and click on that and this feature allows you to customize the interface you see at the

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top of Excel or in this ribbon that's up here.

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It allows you to add buttons or functions that you use a lot or add new tabs entirely.

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And so for us we want to add the developer tab.

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So under this choose commands from dropdown go ahead and select all tabs you can see this list on the

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left contains all of the tabs Excel is capable of showing you and the list on the right contains what

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Excel considers to be the main tabs.

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So right now we can see that this box next to developer is unchecked which means it's not currently

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being shown.

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We're gonna want to go ahead and check that box to make sure that our developer tab will show up in

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our ribbon in case you don't see the developer tab in your main list.

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You can take any of these tabs that appear in the all tabs list on the left and click them to add them

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to your main tab window.

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Now when I click OK to close this we can now see I have my developer tab up at the top with all my other

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tabs that I can toggle between and this is the primary interface that we're going to use for interfacing

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with Visual Basic in our excel file to really make sure we have everything we need access to to build

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our custom features.

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The last thing you need to know about making your Excel file capable of using VBA code and using macros

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is that you need to save the file as a special macro enabled excel file instead of your general excel

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file macro enabled files aren't shareable but they do allow you to run code which is the macros in your

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workbook.

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So we're going to go up to file and then down as and depending on which version of Excel you're using

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this screen might look a little bit different but the same general idea we're going to either click

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on this P.C. or browse or wherever you want to save the file too and then go ahead and navigate to your

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file location.

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Now we can see right here under Save As type.

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Right now it defaults to Excel workbook which is your general excel file so we can go ahead and save

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this once and we'll just call it regular.

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And this way we'll be able to see the difference between the two files that we're gonna do that again

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file save as browse.

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Now this one I will call macros and instead of saving it as a general Excel workbook I'm going to save

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this as an Excel macro enabled workbook which is this option right here and then click on that and click

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save.

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Now if I open this file location we can see that these icons and the file types over here are actually

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going to be a little bit different.

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And so we can see this is your regular file.

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It's got the regular Excel icon as its icon and it's just called a Microsoft Excel worksheet which again

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is just a general excel file with your regular data.

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Nothing special in it.

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This macros file you can see the icon is a little bit different it has this green scroll in the corner

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of it.

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And that means that this file actually has some embedded code it has are macros and things that might

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be built into it and it's not a shareable file.

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So any user who comes and looks at these two files can immediately tell this is a regular file it has

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the regular icon as you say regular Microsoft Excel worksheet whereas this file is the macros file it

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has the scroll in the corner and it says it is a macro enabled worksheet.

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And so a user will instantly know whether or not it's a general excel file or if it's something that

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they should be looking for buttons or code or things like that that might enhance the usability of the

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file.

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So in this video we talked about how to set up Excel to be capable of using macros how to build in the

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developer tab and ways for you to access the VBA that lives behind the file and all of all of the general

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setup work that would go into enabling your file to receive VBA code and macro code.