VBA is the Power Behind the Curtain in Microsoft Office

VBA is the Power Behind the Curtain in Microsoft Office

It’s fun to criticize Microsoft Office tools as complex and hard to control. Beginners are daunted by the feature set, and experienced users still find certain features to be perplexing. It’s true that in some cases, a special-purpose, non-Microsoft tool might better suit your needs. But think of Office as a huge toolset that is jammed with untapped features, and the more you know about them, the more you’ll appreciate and rely on them for sophisticated solutions.

The most significant untapped feature of every Office app is the built-in, user-accessible programming language. It’s called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). With a qualified programmer, VBA can manipulate the user interface features such as menus and toolbars, drive custom user forms and dialog boxes, import and export data to other Office and non-Office applications, and accomplish almost anything your brain can conceive.

Just as it’s impossible to list everything that software can do, it’s impossible to list what VBA can do. Suffice to say that, if you see anyone at work perform the same task more than once, it’s worth investing in a VBA macro to perform that task for the rest of time.

If you’re willing to invest in VBA macros, you’ll see that they create efficiencies that far outweigh or totally eliminate the frustration you may have had with an individual feature.