Datasheet

P1: IML/FFX P2: IML/FFX QC: IML/FFX T1: IML
WY010-01 WY010-Kingsley WY010-Kimmel-v1.cls June 10, 2004 22:23
Primer in Excel VBA
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Next, think about when you want to start recording. In this case, you should include the selection
of cell B1 in the recording, as you want to always have “Jan” in B1. If you don’t select B1 at the
start, you will record typing “Jan” into the active cell, which could be anywhere when you play
back the macro.
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Next, think about when you want to stop recording. You might first want to include some
formatting such as making the cells bold and italic, so you should include that in the recording.
Where do you want the active cell to be after the macro runs? Do you want it to be in the same cell
as “Jun”, or would you rather have the active cell in column A or column B, ready for your next
input? Let’s assume that you want the active cell to be A2, at the completion of the macro, so we
will select A2 before turning off the recorder.
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Now you can set up your screen, ready to record.
In this case, start with an empty worksheet with cell A1 selected. If you like to work with toolbars, use
View
➪ Toolbars to select and display the Visual Basic toolbar as shown in Figure 1-1 in the top right of
the screen. Press the Record Macro button, with the red dot, to start the recorder. If you prefer, start the
recorder with Tools
➪ Macro ➪ Record New Macro . . . from the Worksheet menu bar.
Figure 1-1
In the Macro name: box, replace the default entry, such as Macro1, with the name you want for your
macro. The name should start with a letter and contain only letters, numbers and the underscore
character with a maximum length of 255 characters. The macro name must not contain special characters
such as !, ?, or blank spaces. It is also best to use a short but descriptive name that you will recognize later.
You can use the underscore character to separate words, but it is easy to just use capitalization to
distinguish words.
Note that distinguishing words within a variable name by an initial uppercase letter
is called Pascal-casing, as in ThisIsPascalCased. Making the first word’s first letter
lowercase and all subsequent word’s first letter uppercase is called camel-casing, as
in thisIsCamelCased. With case-sensitive languages like C++, Pascal or C# using
variations on name-casing is a convention that many programmers follow. Because
VBA is not case-sensitive you may use any standard you like, just be consistent.
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