When it comes to Excel, there are thousands of things you can do – and that’s just with basic knowledge! At XL Intelligence, we understand how valuable Excel can be for your business, which is why we set out to provide you with more advanced tools to really get the most out of it. One of those tools is called VBA. Our Excel VBA training in London courses are designed to help teach you how VBA works and what you could do with it in your business. But what exactly is VBA, and how could you use it to improve your skills in Excel, and in business?

What is VBA?

VBA is an acronym that stands for ‘Visual Basic for Applications’. Put simply, it’s a computer language that allows Microsoft programs to talk to each other, exchange data and understand each other at super-fast speeds. While it can be used for a variety of things, VBA is mainly used to automate tasks that are routine, too complex or time-consuming for human beings to do manually. Some of the things it can automate include generating reports, cleaning up spreadsheets and formatting data, along with more complex Excel processes you might not need to do every day, but do need to be quick and accurate. On a basic level, VBA is a fairly intuitive type of code, and has been designed to be easy to understand (if you’re willing to put in a bit of elbow grease). However, if you want to code like a pro, you’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you, as the more complex the process and more detailed the code, the harder it gets to create. But it’s well worth it, since VBA allows you to unlock a lot of new, hidden functionality within Excel that can dramatically improve what you can do, as well as your overall user experience. But why should you consider having Excel VBA training?

What Are The Benefits Of Learning It?

Going through Excel VBA training can bring you and your business a whole host of benefits. From increasing your productivity to saving a lot of time on routine tasks, there are a lot of things you can do using VBA, including:

• Automate repetitive and routine tasks. There are many tasks within a business that are routine and need doing time and time again. While a human being could do these tasks, their time is probably better spent elsewhere in the business. VBA can be used to automate these repetitive tasks and release employee time for more productive tasks. And it’s not just Excel either, because VBA is a Microsoft-wide language, you can use it across all other Microsoft Office applications, for anything from receiving emails in Outlook, generating and sending a responding email or processing data in Excel.

• Increased productivity. This point goes hand in hand with the one above. Human beings are creative, problem-solving creatures, much better suited to complex tasks and creative thinking than dull, repetitive tasks. By using VBA to remove those, you help boost employee productivity at every stage.

• Accessibility for other users. In the corporate world, access to information is vital for performing job roles efficiently. VBA allows one user to write a script that can be used by everyone in the department to share information, without them having to install any extra software. You can also add in user-friendly variables that those other users can modify to a certain degree, so there is quick access to information for everyone, not just a select few.

• Reduces formula burden in Excel. Excel formulas can be long and complicated very quickly. For those who understand complex formula, this isn’t a problem, but often you will be required to present data to non-professionals, which means you might want to hide some of the more difficult to understand code. Excel VBA training will help you learn how to keep the formula coding separate while making the report easy to understand.

• Reduced turnaround time. People working in high-pressure departments like finance are always looking for ways to reduce turnaround time when creating and submitting reports. Not to mention looking for ways to remove the errors that tend to creep in when people are under stress. VBA reporting removes this burden and makes it easy to prepare reports and templates within a short time.

• Reduced error rate. As human beings, we are prone to errors. It’s just part of who we are. But when it comes to Excel, one tiny error can cause a whole host of problems. But with VBA, you can significantly reduce the error rate in your spreadsheets, saving time and costly mistakes.

What Can You Do In Excel With VBA?

So now you know what benefits you could see by investing in some Excel VBA training in London, the next logical question is, what can you actually do with it? What are some of the practical applications of VBA within Excel? Well the actual list is around a mile long, but a few of the highlights include:

• Manipulating Excel objects
• Creating and programming custom forms
• Developing brand new worksheet functions
• Creating simplified front ends for non-technical users

At XL Intelligence, we specialise in running bespoke Excel VBA training in London for business owners and their employees. Our experts can walk you through everything there is to know about VBA, from how to use the macro reader to create a variety of macros, right through to creating procedures that start and run automatically. Delegates need to be proficient in Excel, and ideally would want to learn how to automate standard features and develop programs in VBA. If that sounds like you, or you would like to know more, download our course outline or get in touch with us today.