Help Yourself

I've spent more than 25 years learning VBA. You can give yourself a head-start with the following links. If you're really new to VBA, start with my What is VBA blog post.

​

Topics in my blog

​​

• Files and folders

• Date and time

• The Ribbon

• UserForms

• Add-ins

• Arrays and Collections

• Events

• COM interop

• Enhancing the Visual Basic Editor

• Attributes

• Type Libraries

• Registry

• Strings

• Windows API

• Fonts

• Enums

• MsgBox ... and similar

​​

MS Docs (external links)

​

• The Office VBA Reference - where you go when you press the F1 key in the VBE ... if you're lucky (almost as many errors and omissions as content ... but you can't create VBA code without referring to the source)

• The MS-VBAL (the VBA language specification) - the definitive guide for the VBA language ... tricky to navigate if you're not familiar with it, and it is ONLY the VBA language (so nothing specific to individual applications eg Excel, Word etc) but this provides the detail that is so often missing from the Office VBA Reference

• The RibbonX 2007 specification (aka MS-CUSTOMUI) and the RibbonX 2010 specification (aka MS-CUSTOMUI2) - both still relevant for creating 'ribbon XML'

​

Books (external links)

​

• Professional Excel Development - the best book to learn VBA bar none, but focused on Excel

• Excel 2007 VBA - Programmer's Reference - technical, again focused on Excel

• Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 365 - includes chapters on Word, PowerPoint and Outlook, as well as Excel, but covers the basics only

​

Tools

​

• VBE_Extras (available on this website) ... adds multiple functions to the Visual Basic Editor ... indispensable for any serious VBA coder!

• VBE_Colours (available on this website) ... adjusts the colours shown in the Code and Immediate windows of the Visual Basic Editor

• MZ-Tools (external link) ... just as indispensable as VBE_Extras!

• Office RibbonX Editor (external link) ... edit RibbonX code to customise the Excel, Word or PowerPoint (not Outlook) ribbon

​

VBA Questions?

​

• Ask your AI agent! Almost everyone is using AI nowadays to help learn and draft VBA code. But treat their code with care. Remember, the "intelligence" is, at its core, based on VBA code found on the internet and, because VBA lends itself to "have a go heroes" who dabble here-and-there, the quality of VBA code on the internet tends to be a lot lower than code developed in other languages.

• If you're writing VBA code and have a specific question, Stack Overflow is your friend. Remember first to search for questions and answers that already cover your question. If none do then ask a new question ... always remember to post your code and accept an answer if one is helpful ... that helps future questioners find existing answers.

​​

Bigger than a weekend job? I take on VBA projects too ... get in touch.

​

Please note I have no affiliation with the tools or books on any of the external websites listed on this page.