FESW: Excel and Visual Basic
Please register at https://www.engin.umich.edu/form/feswexcel1
Many of today’s engineering problems require the use of computational tools. Computational tools can also simplify a number of other problems. One commonly used application is Microsoft Excel. Excel offers a spreadsheet template with a number of built in functions and formatting standards. Additionally, Excel offers the ability to record, edit, and write scripts in VBA. Learning to utilize the capabilities of VBA programming can vastly improve the user’s ability to effectively and efficiently solve problems.
The goal of this second part of the ASEE courses on Excel and VBA is to further deepen the knowledge of macros and VBA programming in Excel by setting the focus on advanced techniques, such as writing a function and a procedure from scratch. Therefore, we will cover some formal details of the language Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which we will apply by writing a customized Excel function. Participants will also learn how to combine ActiveX-Control elements with VBA in order to create a user-friendly, interactive Excel-Sheet. Due to the limited time available for this course, we will not be able to cover many aspects of the language VBA in detail. Moreover, this is not the scope of this course. Rather, we will provide the participants with valuable resources simplifying developing in VBA for any kind of problem faced. Thus, the main objective is to provide participants with basic knowledge and toolsets sufficient for efficiently browsing resources in order to solve individual and various problems in Excel using VBA.
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Write an Excel function and procedure using VBA
- Embed control elements, such as buttons, to Excel Sheets
- Exploiting resources efficiently in order to write VBA code
- Drastically expand the functionality of Excel by combining the first three bullet points
It will be expected that the participants have a general understanding of basic Excel use. Experience with VB and/or VBA is not required, although some knowledge will be useful. It is recommended to participate in the first session of ASEE’s workshops on Macros in Excel.