You Can Automate Your Microsoft Office in About 60 Minutes

by Tenny Ing

Published on this site: May 20th, 2005 - See more articles from this month...

Microsoft Office program is a programming tool called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) that comes with Microsoft Excel, Word, Outlook, Power Point, and Publisher. VBA can make your repeating jobs automatic. It also can customize Excel, Word and other Office procedures for your own needs. From Office version 2000, all the Office programs are equipped with VBA.

Hand-On experience is the key to be a good programmer. Programming tutorials are the easier way to learn any computer programs including VBA. For example, a tutorial can show people how to use VBA to automate (make automatic) an Excel routine like updating the fonts and sizes for a range of cells, or automatically pops up a calendar for selecting a date. VBA can also be used as a tool to automate Word mail-merge or create a text file from a Word document. VBA can even be used as a tool to automate email alert in the Outlook Inbox or scheduling task to do.

VBA can make one application like Excel work with another application like Word and Outlook, or any other combination. To make Excel work or control Word is called Excel automates Word. Likewise, Word works with or controls Outlook is called Word automates Outlook.

There can be many applications of automation that was introduced in the previous paragraph. For example, we can write a VBA application to make Word read an Excel address list that is saved in a spreadsheet, and then show the addresses in the Word document. Also, we can write an application to use Word to automate Outlook for reading the contact and any other data in the Contact or other folders. Or, we can use Outlook to read in Word or Excel scheduling list and use it to schedule tasks in Outlook.

Writing VBA programs is quite straightforward and can be learned in a short period, providing that there are tutorials that are well organized and illustrated with many pictures. After going through a few tutorials, the learner can explore on himself or herself the other possibilities with the programming. Learning programming is not as hard as people think. Rather it can be a fun experience to see the programs work.

Besides we need to be good at writing programs, keeping our Windows and Office up-to-date is as important. Please remember to visit Microsoft website to do automatic Windows and Office Update at least once a month, which will assure you have the newest fixes and updates.

There are a few free VBA learning tutorials at www.Viccompinc.com. If you would like to learn beyond the free tutorials, you can sponsor us with the other low cost tutorials. You can also request a tutorial for your own needs with the request entry of the Contact page.

Tenny Ing See how Viccomp's tutorials can show you how to write your first Office program http://www.viccompinc.com Just download the free tutorials to try, or more tutorials for a small fee. Please use the Contact page for your request of a tutorial or programming.