|
Visual Basic for Applications – VBA – is a programming language environment that sits behind all the Microsoft Office applications, as part of the standard installation.
While VBA might be known to some users as the language in which macros are recorded in Word and Excel, in fact it provides complete control over the applications and their data, as well as facilities that are not accessible at all from the applications’ user interfaces.
This enables you to customise the Office applications to fit your own data and procedures, with a minimal amount of development effort. For example, VBA can be used to:
- Provide forms-based user interfaces, as a more user-friendly and reliable way of entering data or performing complex tasks
- Take control of the creation and saving of documents, to ensure valid content, and consistent naming and location on disk
- Automate tasks that have to be performed over large quantities of data, such as cleaning up imported data
- Support the production of periodic reports (e.g. financial), with the
roll-over of data between periods
- Provide custom functions, in Excel or Access, extending the set of built-in functions
- Automate the transfer, merging and manipulation of data, between different workbooks or databases
- Integrate the different Office applications: moving data between Word documents, Excel workbooks and Access databases, as part of an information workflow.
|
