Excel and Visual Basic

Outline

Data exchange between Excel and Visual Basic. Programming VB in Excel

Exchange data with .csv file

.csv file is comma separated value file. .csv file is plain text file. .csv file can only save one worksheet. For multiple worksheets in a workbook, you need to use several .csv files. You need do some editing to remove titles or labels before you use VB to read it.

Example

Code
Private Sub Command1_Click() Dim payment(1 To 50) As Single, commission(1 To 50) As Single Dim index As Integer Open App.Path & "\commission.csv" For Input As #1 index = 1 Do While Not EOF(1) Input #1, payment(index), commission(index) index = index + 1 Loop Close #1 End Sub

Using VB in Excel

Excel uses a special version of Visual Basic, which is called Visual Basic for Application (VBA) User can use VBA to create customized Excel function (VBA procedures), which can be much more powerful than the build-in Excel functions.

Security issues

VBA procedures in Excel is also called Macros. Macros are two-edged swords. Macros viruses are malicious VBA procedures.

Setting the security level

Security Level

High (default) Medium. We should set the security to this level to run our VBA procedure. Low (not recommended)

Medium level security

If you set the security level to medium, every time you open a Excel file containing macro, Excel will ask you if you want to enable the macro.

Example

VBA function code

Function Comm(Sales_V As Single) as Single If Sales_V <500 Then Comm=Sales_V*0.03 Elseif Sales_V>=500 and Sales_V<1000 Then Comm=Sales_V*0.06 Elseif Sales_V>=1000 and Sales_V<2000 Then Comm=Sales_V*0.09 Elseif Sales_V>=200 and Sales_V<5000 Then Comm=Sales_V*0.12 Elseif Sales_V>=5000 Then Comm=Sales_V*0.15 End If End Function

Edit VBA program in Excel

Insert modules

The VBA procedure should be defined in a module. If you dont have an existing module, create one by using the insert->Module menu.

Write code in visual basic editor

Final result

Passing a range of cells to VBA procedure

The previous example shows how to pass one value to a VBA function. However, in Excel it is possible to pass several cells to a build-in function. E.g. SUM(a5:a7) We call a5:a7 is a range. User defined VBA function can also get a range of cells as input.

Data type: range

VBA defines a specific data type: range Range is just like a object: it has properties. Important properties of range

Count : How many cells in the range Value : Value of the cell (it works when range refers to only one cell)

Accessing individual cells

We use a special form of ForNext loop to access each cell in a range

Function meanvalue(InputRange As Range) As Single Dim cl As Range For Each cl In InputRange some code here to get the value cl.value keep the value of the cell Next cl End Function
Red word are key word in Visual Basic

Program task

Define a VBA function that calculate the average of a range of cells. We define the functions name as meanvalue.

code
Function meanvalue(InputRange As Range) As Single Dim cl As Range cl is used to get individual cell Dim index As Integer, sum As Long index = 1 ReDim inputarray(1 To InputRange.Count) As Single For Each cl In InputRange inputarray(index) = cl.Value save cell value into array index = index + 1 Next cl sum = 0 For i = 1 To InputRange.Count sum = sum + inputarray(i) Next meanvalue = sum / InputRange.Count End Function

Use your defined VBA function