Experience in VBA for Excel

**totmoses** · 05-14-2011, 07:18 AM

Dear Members,
I am very happy to be a member of your community and would benefit from your experience, I started with VBA for Excel, I have many challenges in my work on the responsebility some tools that are programmed with VBA, I have a basic training and bought many books but I do not know how I can get the experience what I need in short time and if there is a best way to train with VBA. Thank you in advance for feedback.
totmoses

**TMS** · 05-14-2011, 09:37 AM

Experience is exactly that ... usually gained by consolidation of training and practice.

I generally learn best by building on working examples and adapting them to my needs. I also need to be challenged; that's one of the reasons I am a member of this forum ... it gives me opportunities to resolve issues for others and, in the process learn. And I can learn from the techniques demonstrated and solutions provided by others.

Start by recording macros as you undertake tasks manually. This will give you basic code that you can tweak, enhance and improve. Follow the questions on the forum and the answers; some of them will be relevant to your challenges. And ask your own questions.

Hope this helps

Regards

**Domski** · 05-14-2011, 09:40 AM

Hi,

I think the best way to learn is to try things for yourself. If you have code (little bits, not huge chunks) that you want explaining people on here should be happy enough to help. Otherwise pick a task at work that you think would benefit from automation (start fairly small) and have a go and build up from there.

There's no magic wand I'm afraid and some people will pick things up quicker than others.

Dom

**ron2k_1** · 05-15-2011, 09:35 PM

I agree with Dom. Start small... I'm relatively new to VBA as well; but after paying close attention to the way the seasoned members here solve others' VBA requirements made me learn alot.

Undertake something small, and Google is your friend. Trust me, more than likely your issue has come up before in some other excel-vba site, or (even better) there is some tutorial about it somewhere. If after googling, and searching on your own you still cannot get a fully functional piece of code, then ask...

**totmoses** · 05-19-2011, 01:37 PM

Dear TM Shucks, Domski and Ron,
many thanks for your advice and I notice already that I'm not wrong in our Forum.
You are right, but sometimes patience is missing.
I will do my best and will definitely be successful with you

regards

**Whizbang** · 05-19-2011, 02:21 PM

I agree that it really helps to have something challenging to work on. A lot of people just pick a process they would like to automate and then do their best. This works really well, but sometimes you bite off more than you can chew. Sometimes the process is more complex than you imagined. Or because the process is already in place, you have a hard time stepping back and really re-invent the process, and you get struck just trying to exactly duplicate a manual process. There are many pitfalls, and it can get messy and sap the fun right out of it.

One thing I like to do to keep it interesting is to try and develope games in Excel. This gives you a challenge, something fun, and you won't risk breaking an existing process. Pick a classic (yet simple) game, and try to duplicate it in Excel. For instance, I made a Hangman game. I learned loads of neat and useful tricks while trying to make this simple game. Then, when you have a few tricks up your sleeve, you can approach a real-world problem a little more confidently.

But, everyone has their own learning style, and different demands on their time and energy.

One thing that I learned is not to skip on the practice examples provided in books. These are often too simplistic to be interesting, but they are very valuable to understanding and retaining the information you read. Like the expression says "If you want to remember something, write it down". If you want to understand and remember how to create a usefule VB script or application, then you need to actually type one out. It makes a world of difference.