Smaller companies generally have more opportunities for VBA than larger companies.The vast majority of VBA solutions are written in Excel.VBA solutions are best when maintained and used by as few users as possible.VBA solutions are ideal when saving money is a high priority.Keep these general rules in mind for choosing the VBA path: In general, companies and departments trying to save money will be far more receptive to using VBA as a solution. One final word on context: if you aim to find the most opportunities to use VBA, you’ll find them in small companies, companies that are downsizing, or even departments within large companies operating on a low budget.
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Alternatively, you could investigate the functionality of a new business intelligence tool, spend hours of time training yourself on how to use it, and then find out that there are compatibility issues (or other unanticipated limitations) with it. Since business intelligence tool licenses can cost thousands of dollars and most companies use MS Office by default, I think there is far less risk in starting a VBA project, finding out that it is no longer viable, and then abandoning it completely. In other words, understand that there is a risk of wasting your time developing a VBA solution that is either replaced by a business intelligence tool in a few weeks or rendered obsolete because of an unforeseen business process change (e.g., the business process was specific to a client that you were working with and they terminated their agreement with your company). Is this business process going to change dramatically in a few months, and would such a change break your code?ĭecisions in IT procurement and resource allocation could reduce the life expectancy of your code.
Figure out how long it should take you to finish writing your VBA script, how long it should take you to perform the task manually, and how long this task will exist. For example, if your department is investing in a new business intelligence tool that could solve the problem, then you should investigate that tool prior to writing any VBA code. Make sure you understand the risks of using a VBA process as a solution, as well as any possible alternatives. Construct a timeline to help clarify deadline estimates and the life expectancy of each solution. Understand the Context of Your Automation ProjectĪs with any project, the first thing you need to do is understand the context of the process that you want to automate. Let’s look at how to know when using VBA is the right way to go. Two points that you must keep in mind are: “How much time will it take?” and “Is there an overlapping functionality in another application that we have or will have in the near future?” Sure, it would be nice if you could automate every task that touches Excel, but what is the opportunity cost? This new macro mindset can cause problems if you do not use it in the context of how businesses work. Since a macro is defined as a way to map input parameters to output parameters, often for the purpose of automating work, then it is fitting to describe your mindset shift from a fundamentally “manual mindset” to a “macro mindset.” Once you understand how macros work, you start looking for more macro projects that can potentially save you a lot of time. This new mindset is the result of understanding the object hierarchy of these applications or even using the macro recorder effectively.
Once you have successfully automated anything related to your job in VBA, you’ve then probably adopted a whole new outlook (no pun intended) on MS Office products, particularly Excel. We’ll discuss the fundamental mindset shift that happens when you start working with VBA and how to make that mindset work for you and for your company. VBA can save you time and make you a rockstar at work, but as with any great power, you need to use it wisely.
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I’m going to walk you through creating a composite key and finding all the records from a file that match those in our master file, and then we’ll analyze the non-matching records using several pivot tables to assist in pattern recognition.Įven more important than learning the code is learning the right mindset to make VBA work for you. If you have a basic understanding of VBA but no clear application for its use yet, this article will provide exactly that: real-life, pragmatic examples of complete VBA procedures that transform entire business processes into the click of a button. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) may be used to automate virtually anything in any Microsoft Office (MS Office) product. Using VBA in Microsoft Excel for Data Analysis Automation
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