How to use Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in Excel VBA

From Chandoo.org

How to use Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in Excel VBA:

This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.

1. What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel


2. Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA


3. Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros


4. Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel


5. My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros

In part 3 of our VBA Crash Course, we are going to learn how to speak with various Excel objects like Cells, Ranges etc. and deal with them.

Objects – what are they?

Any thing and everything is an object. Your dog, your bed, your neighbors cat, their car, your bike, your computer, the shiny new Excel workbook you just created, my website, your email account – every thing is an object. For that matter, Lady Gaga’s meat dress is an object too. But that is a whole different subject.

From our “We are nuts” example yesterday, you can already see these objects:

• One awesome owner (that is you)


• 24 store manager objects


• 24 store objects

Some sample objects you can find in Excel workbooks

• Cells, lots of them


• Ranges of cells


• Worksheets


• Charts


• Pivot Tables


• The entire workbook

Objects & Excel VBA

Since your Excel workbook is nothing but a collection of objects, whenever you want to make any change (like modify a cell’s value or recolor a chart), you need to refer to the corresponding object and do the necessary thing.

But how do we talk to these objects from VBA. Well, to know that, you must understand how an Object looks to our eyes vis-a-vis computer’s eyes. Here is an illustration to help you understand the difference.

As you can guess, Objects have Properties. In the case above, color RED is a property of the cell object.

Objects – What are they made of?

In VBA world, objects are made of 2 things – properties & methods.

The color of a cell is a property.

You use copy method to copy cell’s value to Excel’s clipboard.

In other words, properties are what an object has. Methods are operations you do on the object.

Note: Certain objects also have a special class of methods called as Events. An Event is a special type of method that runs only when a circumstance is met. For example, select a cell, Excel internally runs SelectionChange Event on the current worksheet.

How do we access these properties & methods?

In plain English, if you want to know the color of a cell, you would ask “What is the color of cell A4?”

In Excel VBA language, the same becomes Range(“A4″).Interior.Color

Notice how the dot (.) is used like of in our plain English version.

Dot (.) is your best friend when dealing with objects. Since many Excel objects have dozens of properties and methods associated with them, to help us understand and use right properties, VBE (Visual Basic Editor) shows all the properties and methods whenever you press . after typing an object, like this:

Most commonly used Objects in VBA:

While there are no single set of objects that are used by everyone for every need, there are a few VBA objects that are used in many situations. In this section, we will examine these objects.

Range Object:

Range object is used to refer to a range of cells. For example Range(“A1:A10″) refers to the cells A1:A10 in the current worksheet. Range has a lot of useful methods and properties. One of the commonly used property is is Range(“A1:A10″).cells which refers to all the cells in the range.

Tips on using range object:

• You can use named ranges in Range object like this: Range(“myStoreList”)


• You can use square brackets [] to refer to ranges like this: [A10] refers to Range(“A10″)


• You can use variables in Range Object like this: Range(mylist) refers to whatever address is stored in mylist variable.


• You can use variables along with static text, like this: Range(“A1:A” & endPoint) refers to the range A1:A120, assuming endPoint variable is 120.

ActiveCell Object:

Active cell object refers to the currently selected cell. If you have selected a range of cells, usually ActiveCell refers to the top-left cell.

Tips on using ActiveCell Object:

• Use ActiveCell.End(xlDown).Activate to select the last cell in the same row with a value (assumes you have no breaks in between). You can also use options like xlToLeft, xlToRight, xlUp too.

Selection Object:

Selection object refers to the currently selected cells or anything else that is selected (like a chart or drawing shape).

How to learn about various Excel Objects and use them:

Excel has a lot of objects. Some times objects contain other objects. For example a Range contains some Cells. A Selection may contain some Charts. Understanding the hierarchy and properties of all these objects is a tough task. But thankfully, there is help.

Here are my top tips to learn about various Excel Objects:

• Use Macro Recorder: Whenever you need to use an object that you are not familiar with, just use built-in macro recorder and do some operations on that object. Now stop it and view the code. You would have a good idea how to deal with that object. For ex. if you want to learn how to use VBA to refresh a pivot table, just start recorder, select the pivot, refresh it and stop the recorder. Now go and see the code and you will have a good idea how to refresh pivot tables from VBA.


• Use VBA Help: Excel VBA has a very good help system. Just go to Visual Basic Editor (ALT+F11) and press F1 to start the help. Type the object name you want help on and read thru the pages to learn. VBE also has a helpful screen called “Object Browser” to visually browse various Excel objects and understand the methods & properties.


• Learn from Code Examples: There are several sites, including Chandoo.org that publish frequent articles, code samples and tips on Excel & VBA. Follow a handful of these sites and learn from the shared examples.


• Take up some project: In your day to day work, you always see some problems that can be solved with VBA. So go ahead and take up one such task and try to do it using VBA. This is a great way to learn a new language like VBA.


• Join a Training Program: Last but not least, joining a training program is a good way to learn VBA. If you want a good program on VBA, consider joining our upcoming batch of VBA Classes.

Putting it all together – a Daily Sales Tracker for “We Are Nuts”:

So far you have learned What is Excel VBA, How to use variables, conditions & loops and How to use various Excel Objects.

Tomorrow, we will put together all these lessons to create a Daily Sales Tracker for our “We Are Nuts” dry fruit & nuts chain of stores.

What are your tips for learning about Excel Objects & Using Them?

Excel Object Model is vast and deep. There are a lot of things that we can learn (and remember), but there are a lot more that we will never know or memorize until we need to use them. I always rely on built-in macro recorder to learn about the objects and then modify the code until it works just right.

What about you? How do you learn about Excel Objects? Please share your tips & ideas using comments.

Join Chandoo.org’s VBA Classes

We run an online VBA (Macros) Class every 3 months. We just finished our first batch and it was an awesome experience for both students & teachers (Vijay, Hui and I teach this course). Now, we are opening the enrollments for 2nd batch of VBA classes from September 5th, Monday. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.

Click here to learn more about our VBA program.

Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA [Part 2 of 5]

From Chandoo.org

Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA [Part 2 of 5]:
This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.

1. What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel


2. Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA


3. Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros


4. Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel


5. My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros

In part 2 of our VBA Crash Course, we are going to learn what Variables, Conditions & Loops are and how to use them in Excel VBA.

What are Variables, Conditions & Loops?

If you are new to computer programming, you might think I am speaking legalese. So, to make it easy to understand, lets assume you run a bunch of stores across the town. To make it colorful, lets call your stores “We are nuts” – a dry fruit and nuts store chain. At the end of every day, you call each of the 24 store managers and ask them how much sales they have made in that day.

Now, you are not the kind of boss who micro-manages & nitpicks. So you don’t really note down sale for every store. Instead, as you call the store manager, you just mentally update the total. So first store says “$2,300″ your total is 2300. Second manger says “$4,000″, the total now will be 6300. So on.

The value 6300 here is nothing but a variable.

A Variable is a small chunk of computer’s memory used to store a value.

Although you don’t micro-manage, you are certainly concerned, whenever a “we are nuts” store reports sales that are too low or too high. You then speak with the store manager for few extra minutes to understand what is going and how you can help. Lets just say, this threshold is $500 for low sales and $5000 for high sales. So anytime a manager reports values beyond this limit (500,5000), you spend some time discussing the business and learning what is going on.

This sort of thing is nothing but a condition.

A Condition is a logical check computer performs to test something. For eg. Sales < 500 or Sales > 5000 is a condition.

And now the whole process of each of the 24 store managers calling you and reporting the daily sales is nothing but a loop. They call you everyday and do the same thing.

A Loop is a set of instructions meant to be followed certain number of times.

Using Variables in VBA

Variables as we learned, are small chunks of computer memory used to store and retrieve a value. We can use them to store numbers, text, ranges of cells, charts or pretty much anything when it comes to VBA.

As with anything else, Variables too have a life span. Some variables die as soon as the SUB in which they are created ends. Some variables (declared at module level) have better life span as they go to gym and eat healthy food.

How to create variables in VBA?

Whenever you want to use a variable, you must create them first. This is your way of telling computer to set aside some memory units so that your variable can be used.

In Excel VBA, you can do this by the DIM statement.

For eg. below are some variables declared in VBA.

Dim someNumber As Integer

Dim otherNumber As Double

Dim someText As String

Dim aCondition As Boolean

Dim myCells As Range

Dim myChart As Chart

Dim myList(1 To 10) As String

Dim anotherList() As Variant

Aside: Should I define my variables?
By default, you can use variables without defining them in VBA. That means, if we write someNumber=12 without writing any DIM statement corresponding to it, your VBA code would still work. But this is not a good practice. Mainly because, if you are not declaring variables, then you don’t know what is available for you to use.

You can force Excel to throw up an error whenever you did not declare variables by adding the statement option explicit at the top of your code.

As you can see, this is almost like plain English. Let us understand 2 of these lines. The rest you can figure out easily.

Dim someNumber as Integer: This line tells Excel that you want to have a variable with the name someNumber which is of the type Integer. This means, you are going to use someNumber variable to store integer values only. Please note that Excel VBA integers are capable of storing values from -32,768 to 32,767 only. If you want to store bigger (or smaller) numbers, you can use the types Long or Double.

Dim myList(1 to 10) as String: This line tells Excel that you want to use a list of values (called as arrays in computer lingo) of String (text) type. The list size is defined to be 10. You can access individual items of the list by using the item number, like this: myList(2) points to second item in the list.

How to use variables in VBA?

Once you have created a few variables, you can use them in your VBA code. A few examples below.

VBA Code	What it does?
someNumber = 2	Stores 2 in to the variable someNumber
someText = “Hello”	someText has the text value hello
someNumber = someNumber + 1	Increments the value of someNumber by 1
myList(2) = 812	Sets the value of 2nd item in myList array to 812
activeCell.Value = someNumber	Places the value of someNumber in currently selected cell
someNumber = activeCell.Value	Places the value of currently selected cell in someNumber variable

Using Conditions in VBA

Almost everything we do involves making decisions & testing conditions. In the “we are nuts” example, we are testing the condition of sales less than 500 or more than 5000 and then doing something based on that.

You can use various statements in VBA to test for conditions. We will learn the simplest of them. IF and THEN statement.

Using IF THEN Statement in VBA

VBA’s IF Then statement looks almost like plain English. Here is an example to test the Sales condition.

If ourSales < 500 or ourSales > 5000 then

'special instructions to handle too many or too little sales

end if

The above code should be obvious to you by now.

Using ELSE statement in VBA

Just like IF THEN statements are used to test a condition and do something, ELSE is used to do something when the IF condition is failed.

For eg,

If ourSales < 500 or ourSales > 5000 then

'special instructions to handle too many or too little sales

Else

'Note down the sales & move on

end if

Would just note down the sales figures if the sales are between 500 and 5000.

Using Loops in VBA

A Loop is a set of instructions meant to be followed specific number of times, as defined earlier. In “we are nuts” example, we are calling and asking for sales 24 times. That means we are doing the same set of operations (call, ask for sales, if the sales are too low or too high do something, hang-up) 24 times, in a loop.

In VBA, there are several different ways to write loops. We will see the easiest type of loop today. For more, please consider joining our Online VBA classes.

Using FOR Loop in VBA

A for loop repeats a set of VBA instructions any given number of times. For eg.

For storeNumber = 1 to 24

'call the store

'ask for sales figures

'do something if needed

'hang up

Next storeNumber

Would run for 24 times and each time repeats the same 4 steps (call, ask, do, hang-up).

Using FOR EACH Loop in VBA

FOR EACH is a special type of loop in Excel used to run same instructions for each of the various items in a list.

For example,

For Each cell in Range("A1:A10")

cell.value = cell.value + 1

Next cell

would run 10 times and increment each of the cell’s values by 1 in the range A1:A10.

Putting it all together – a Simple VBA Program to Note Down Sales of 24 stores

Now that you have learned 3 key ingredients of VBA – Variables, Conditions & Loops, its time we put them together to do a small VBA program.

A Demo of our Daily Sales Log VBA Application

Before we jump in to the code, lets just take a look at how it would work. I have shown it only for 5 stores. But it works for 24.

The Code behind our Daily Sales Log VBA Application

Here is the code that captures the sales of 24 stores whenever you click on the “Capture Sales” button.

Sub captureSales()

'when you run this macro, it will take the sales of all the 24 stores we own

'it will ask for a reason if the sales are too low or too high

Dim storeNum As Integer

Dim reason As String

Dim store As Range

storeNum = 1

For Each store In Range("C7:C30")

store.Value = InputBox("Sales for Store " & storeNum)

If store.Value < 500 Or store.Value > 5000 Then

reason = InputBox("Why are the sales deviated?", "Reason for Deviation", "Reason for Deviation")

store.Offset(, 1).Value = reason

End If

storeNum = storeNum + 1

Next store

End Sub

How this code works?

By now, you are already familiar with various parts of this code. So I will just explain the alien portions.

• Dim statements: These lines declare the variables we are going to use. Notice the different data types (Integer, Range etc.) we have used for various types of data we want to hold.


• For Each store In Range(“C7:C30″): This line is going to tell excel that for each store (ie cell) in the range C7:C30, we need to repeat the instructions all the way until Next Store. In our case, Excel is going to repeat for 24 times.


• store.Value = InputBox(“Sales for Store ” & storeNum): This line shows a small box to you and asks for your input. You can enter a number and press OK (or enter). Whatever value you enter will be placed in current store’s cell.


• reason = InputBox(“Why are the sales deviated?”, “Reason for Deviation”, “Reason for Deviation”): This line shows a box to user with a title and default value (Reason for deviation).


• store.Offset(,1).value = reason: This statement places the reason for sales deviation in to the cell right to the store sales. Offset(,1) does the trick here.

Download Example Workbook & Learn about Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA

Click here to download the example workbook and learn more about variables, conditions & loops in VBA.

What Next – Understanding Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in VBA

In the part 3 of this tutorial, we will learn how to use cells, ranges & other objects from VBA. Stay Tuned.

If you have not read, please read the first part of this series – Introduction to Excel VBA – What is it & How to write your first VBA Macro.

How do you like this Example?

How do you like the VBA examples shown in this article? How would you enhance the macro to do more? One idea is to add another button to clear previous day’s sales.

Please share your views & ideas using comments. I like to learn from what you share.

Join Chandoo.org’s VBA Classes

We run an online VBA (Macros) Class every 3 months. We just finished our first batch and it was an awesome experience for both students & teachers (Vijay, Hui and I teach this course). Now, we are opening the enrollments for 2nd batch of VBA classes from September 5th, Monday. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.

Click here to learn more about our VBA program.

What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel [VBA Crash Course Part 1 of 5]

From Chandoo.org

What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel [VBA Crash Course Part 1 of 5]:
This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.

1. What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel


2. Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA


3. Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros


4. Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel


5. My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros

Introduction to Excel VBA

Everyone has a language. My mother tongue is Telugu. But I also speak Hindi, English and Cutish (that is the language my 2 year old kids speak). You may be fluent in English, Spanish, French, German or Vietnamese.

Just like you and I, Excel has a language too, the one it can speak and understand. This language is called as VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

When you tell instructions to Excel in this VBA language, Excel can do what you tell it. Thus enabling you to program Excel so that you can automate a boring report, format a big&ugly chart, clean-up some messy data or just play some random noises.

What is a Macro then?

A macro is nothing but a set of instructions you give Excel in the VBA language.

Writing Your First Macro

Note: If you are new computer programming, watch our Introduction to Programming Video before proceeding.

In order to write your first VBA program (or Macro), you need to know the language first. This is where Excel’s tape recorder will help us.

Tape Recorder?!?

Yes. Excel has a built-in tape recorder, that listens and records everything you do, in Excel’s own language, ie VBA.

Since we dont know any VBA, we will use this recorder to record our actions and then we will see recorded instructions (called as code in computer lingo) to understand how VBA looks like.

Our First VBA Macro – MakeMeRed()

Now that you understand some VBA jargon, lets move on and write our very first VBA Macro. The objective is simple. When we run this macro, it is going to color the currently selected cell with Red. Why red? Oh, red is pretty, bright and awesome – just like you.

This is how our macro is going to work when it is done.

6 steps to writing your first macro

I don’t see Developer Ribbon. Now what?
If you do not see Developer ribbon, follow these instructions.

Excel 2007:

1. Click on Office button (top left)

2. Go to Excel Options

3. Go to Popular

4. Check “Show Developer Tab in Ribbon” (3rd Check box)

5. Click ok.

Excel 2010:

1. Click on File Menu (top left)

2. Go to Options

3. Select “Customize Ribbon”

4. Make sure “Developer tab” is checked in right side area

5. Click ok.

Step 1: Select any cell & start macro recorder

This is the easiest part. Just select any cell and go to Developer Ribbon & click on Record Macro button.



Step 2: Give a name to your Macro

Specify a name for your macro. I called mine MakeMeRed. You can choose whatever you want. Just make sure there are no spaces or special characters in the name (except underscore)

Click OK when done.

Step 3: Fill the current cell with red color

This is easy as eating pie. Just go to Home ribbon and fill red color in the current cell.

Step 4: Stop Recording

Now that you have done the only step in our macro, its time to stop Excel’s tape recorder. Go to Developer ribbon and hit “stop recording” button.



Step 5: Assign your Macro to a button

Now go to Insert ribbon and draw a nice rectangle. Then, put some text like “click me to fill red” in it.

Then right click on the rectangle shape and go to Assign Macro. And select the MakeMeRed macro from the list shown. Click ok.



Step 6: Go ahead and play with your first macro

That is all. Now, we have linked the rectangle shape to your macro. Whenever you click it, Excel would drop a bucket of red paint in the selected cell(s).

Go ahead and play with this little macro of ours.

Understanding the MakeMeRed Macro Code

Now that your first macro is working, lets peek behind the scenes and understand what VBA instructions are required to fill a cell with red.

To do this, right click on your current sheet name (bottom left) and click on View code option. (You can also press ALT+F11 to do the same).

This opens Visual Basic Editor – a place where you can view & edit various VBA instructions (macros, code) to get things done in Excel.

Understanding the Visual Basic Editor:

Before understanding the MakeMeRed macro, we need to be familiar with VBE (Visual Basic Editor). See this drawing to understand it.

Viewing the VBA behind MakeMeRed

1. Select Module 1 from left side area of VBE (called as Project Explorer).


2. Double click on it to open it in Editor Area (top right, big white rectangle)


3. You can see the VBA Code behind MakeMeRed

If you have followed the instructions above, your code should look like this:

Sub MakeMeRed()

'

' MakeMeRed Macro

'

With Selection.Interior

.Pattern = xlSolid

.PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic

.Color = 192

.TintAndShade = 0

.PatternTintAndShade = 0

End With

End Sub

So much for a simple red paint!!!

Well, what can I say, Excel is rather verbose when it is recording.

Understanding the MakeMeRed VBA Code

Lets go thru the entire Macro code one line at a time.

• Sub MakeMeRed(): This line tells Excel that we are writing a new set of instructions. The word SUB indicates that the following lines of VBA are a sub-procedure (or sub-routine). Which in computer lingo means, a group of related instructions meant to be followed together to do something meaningful. The Sub-procedure ends when Excel sees the phrase “End Sub”


• Lines starting with a single quote (‘): These lines are comments. Excel will ignore anything you write after a single quote. These are meant for your understanding.


• With Selection.Interior: While filling a cell with Red color may seem like one step for you and I, it is in fact a lot of steps for your computer. And whenever you need to do a lot of operations on the same thing (in this case, selected cell), it is better to bunch all of them. This is where the WITH statement comes in to picture. When Excel sees With Seletion.Interior, Excel is going to think, “ok, I am going to do all the next operations on Selected Cell’s Interior until I see End With line“


• Lines starting with .: These are the lines that tell Excel to format the cell’s interior. In this case, the most important line is .Color = 192 which is telling Excel to fill Red color in the selected cell.


• End With: This marks the end of With block.


• End Sub: This marks the end of our little macro named MakeMeRed().

Few Tips to understand this macro better:

Once you are examining the macro code, here are a few ways to learn better.

• Change something: You can change almost any line of the macro to see what happens. For example, change .color = 192 to .color = 62 and save. Then come back to Excel and run your macro to see what happens.


• Delete something: You can remove some of the lines in the macro to see what happens. Remove the line .PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic and run again to see what happens.

Download Example Workbook to learn VBA

Click here to download the example workbook with MakeMeRed Macro.

Excel 2003 Compatible Version here.

Play with the code & understand this better.

What Next – Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops

In the part 2 of this tutorial, Learn about variables, conditions & loops – basic programming structures of VBA.

Do you write VBA Code? Share your experience?

Thanks to my college education & job experience. I am trained to be a programmer. So I find VBA quite intuitive and easy to use. But that may not be the case for many of you who latch on to VBA without any formal education.

I would like to know how you learn VBA and what experiences you had when you wrote that first macro. Please share using comments.

Join Chandoo.org’s VBA Classes

We run an online VBA (Macros) Class every 3 months. We just finished our first batch and it was an awesome experience for both students & teachers (Vijay, Hui and I teach this course). Now, we are opening the enrollments for 2nd batch of VBA classes from September 5th, Monday. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.

Click here to learn more about our VBA program.