You should now be able to see the Developer tab in the ribbon - if not you haven't performed the first of the tasks and if you can't run a VBA program then you haven't successfully configured the Trust center. Select Macro settings and finally select enable all macros. To do this you use the File, Options command again but this time select the Trust Center and the Trust Center Settings. This isn't quite enough because you also have to allow the Excel to run programs included with spreadsheets. You then have tick the Developer box to allow the Developer icon to appear. To enable VBA you have to use the File, Options and select Customise the Ribbon. For historical reasons VBA programs are also known as 'macros' and you will find that a lot of the menu options and help files refer to macros.

Because spreadsheets that contain programs can be a security risk VBA is disabled in all spreadsheets by default.

If you are using Excel 2010 then your first problem is enabling VBA. This may seem trivial but it ensures that you know how to start writing a program and how to run a program without worrying you too much about the difficulties of the actual program. It is a long tradition in programming that the first program you write when learning a new language is “Hello World”.Īll this program does is to display the message on the screen for you to see. So open a copy of Excel and let's get started. Over time VBA has been removed from the main menus and been converted into an option to save beginners from being confused or intimidated by it.įor the screen dumps we are going to use Excel 2010 but the all of the earlier versions of Excel work in much the same way once you get to actually writing a program.

The same is true for different versions of Excel - but what does differ is how you gain access to the facility. You will also find VBA within other Office applications and the details of the language hardly differ. What is isn't so good at is building big and sophisticated applications, but as a way of automating Excel and building Excel-based applications it is very good indeed. Today VBA is the last outpost of classic Visual Basic and it is very suited to getting jobs done quickly and easily. VBA is derived from Visual Basic 6 which was the most used programming language in the world until it was phased out when Microsoft introduced.

How to download visual basic for excel