Microsoft Office

Introducing Visual Basic for Applications 39
What’s New in the Visual Basic Editor?
E
xcel 2007 sports a brand new interface, but what about the Visual Basic Editor? If you used the Visual Basic
Editor in a previous version of Excel, you’ll be in familiar territory. In Office 2007, Microsoft left the VB
Editor essentially untouched. The VBA language has been updated to accommodate the new Excel features,
but the VB Editor has no new features, and the toolbars and menus work exactly like they always have.
ON the CD-ROM
A workbook that contains this macro is available on the companion CD-ROM. The file is
named current date.xlsm.
Sub procedures always start with the keyword Sub, the macro’s name (every macro must have a unique
name), and then a pair of parentheses. (The parentheses are required; they’re empty unless the procedure
uses one or more arguments.) The End Sub statement signals the end of the procedure. The lines in
between comprise the procedure’s code.
The macro shown in Figure 39.5 also includes a comment. Comments are simply notes to yourself, and
they’re ignored by VBA. A comment line begins with an apostrophe. You can also put a comment after a
statement. In other words, when VBA encounters an apostrophe, it ignores the rest of the text in the line.
You execute a VBA Sub procedure in any of the following ways:
n
n
Choose Developer ➪ Code ➪ Macros to display the Macro dialog box. Then select the procedure’s
name from the list and click Run.
You can also access the Macro dialog box by pressing Alt+F8 or by clicking the Play Macro button
in the left part of Excel’s status bar.
Press the procedure’s shortcut key combination (if it has one).
n If the Visual Basic Editor is active, move the cursor anywhere within the code and press F5.
n Refer to the procedure in another VBA procedure.
VBA functions
The second type of VBA procedure is a function. A function always returns a single value (just as a worksheet
function always returns a single value). A VBA function can be executed by other VBA procedures or
used in worksheet formulas, just as you would use Excel’s built-in worksheet functions.
Figure 39.6 shows the listing of a custom worksheet function and shows the function in use in a worksheet.
This function is named CubeRoot, and it requires a single argument. CubeRoot calculates the cube root
of its argument. A Function procedure looks much like a Sub procedure. Notice, however, that function
procedures begin with the keyword Function and end with an End Function statement.
ON the CD-ROM
A workbook that contains this function is available on the companion CD-ROM. The file is
named cube root .xlsm.
685