Macros vs VBA - What's the Difference?

Quick reference

• 00:05 Before we dive into this course, what I wanna
• 00:08 cover first is just a little background on the difference between macros and VBA.
• 00:13 We tend to toss those terms out interchangeably, but
• 00:16 they're not exactly the same thing, and I wanna cover off why that is.
• 00:20 The first thing we wanna talk about is macros.
• 00:22 Now macros have existed for a long long time in lots of different applications.
• 00:27 They're not something that's specific to Excel.
• 00:29 Access has them,
• 00:29 and I worked with macros in a program called Act Pack Six which ran on DOS.
• 00:34 Basically what a macro is, is it's a pre-recorded
• 00:37 set of actions that we can use over and over again.
• 00:41 Typically what they do is, we'll go in and we'll record something to happen, and
• 00:45 then we'll be able to replay that from a specific single entry point.
• 00:49 By hitting that entry point, it allows us to replay those pre-recorded actions.
• 00:53 And the nice thing about it is that, typically,
• 00:55 it's actually something that we would record from the user interface, okay?
• 00:58 So, basically, a macro is just something that allows us to replay actions that
• 01:02 we've done at least once in the past.
• 01:05 When I think back to really old programs that I used to use, we actually had to
• 01:08 program these things a little bit through some scripting cells and whatnot.
• 01:12 But we could do something like, move through this cell,
• 01:15 arrow down a couple of times, hit enter, maybe pause for user input,
• 01:19 and then resume and stuff like that.
• 01:21 So, basically, steps that we've scripted to happen in a certain way.
• 01:27 VBA is a little bit different then that.
• 01:29 VBA is actually an entire programming language for scripting.
• 01:33 This is the language in Excel that we actually use to create our macros, but
• 01:38 the big difference here is it is a full language that we can work with.
• 01:42 And we can do things that you cannot record through the user interface as we're
• 01:47 working with it.
• 01:48 So this is a big, big difference here.
• 01:50 Macros are a pre-recorded set of actions.
• 01:52 VBA is an entire language that allows us to do all kinds of different things.
• 01:57 So why is VBA so important to us?
• 02:00 Well, the number one reason is that it's an easy language to get started with.
• 02:05 This is huge.
• 02:06 It's the lowest barrier to entry to learn programming on the planet, bar none.
• 02:11 Excel actually, if you have two monitors, will allow you to put the Visual Basic
• 02:15 editor on one monitor and your Excel on the other.
• 02:17 And as you start recording your macros,
• 02:19 you can actually watch it write the code for you as we go.
• 02:22 Now I'm not gonna do that in this particular course,
• 02:24 only because I don't have enough screen space to work with.
• 02:27 But if you've got two monitors at home, I highly suggest you try this.
• 02:30 Throw VBA on one monitor, throw Excel on the other, try recording a macro, and
• 02:33 watch as it writes line-by-line the stuff that you do.
• 02:36 It's very, very cool.
• 02:37 This is huge,
• 02:38 because it allows you to learn the syntax of the programming language as you go.
• 02:42 As you interact with Excel,
• 02:43 you'll see what's happening in the programming language.
• 02:45 The other really nice thing about VBA is that it actually teaches you
• 02:50 language concepts that are applicable to other languages' structure and
• 02:54 syntax, and how to actually work with something.
• 02:57 Now other programing languages have their own syntax and
• 02:59 their own way to work with things, that's always true.
• 03:03 But the beauty is that the concepts that you learn here are the same.
• 03:08 The first language I ever learned in programming was something called Basic,
• 03:11 back when I was in high school.
• 03:13 Way, way, way back when.
• 03:14 The second language I learned, and one we're actually really started to learn,
• 03:17 was actually VBA.
• 03:19 Today, I program in seven different languages, including C# and VB.NET and
• 03:23 a few others.
• 03:24 All of that language and all that knowledge that I got came from
• 03:27 working with Excel and learning to program through this particular user interface.
• 03:30 Will you get there tomorrow?
• 03:32 Absolutely not!
• 03:33 But will you actually be able to actually take that knowledge and
• 03:35 port it somewhere else?
• 03:36 If you want to, you absolutely will, and that's huge.
• 03:39 The other thing that I want you to be aware of with VBA is that it's much
• 03:43 bigger than just Excel.
• 03:45 VBA actually exists in every Office application.
• 03:49 This is really important.
• 03:50 Now, they all have their own object models,
• 03:51 and we'll talk more about object models a little bit later on in this course.
• 03:55 But the key part is that it's one common language frame
• 03:58 that's used throughout the entire Office suite.
• 04:02 This language has also been licensed by other companies and
• 04:04 is actually in use in some of their things.
• 04:06 AutoCAD has VBA in it, and
• 04:08 Corel had a few of their products that actually ported in some VBA as well.
• 04:13 So there's other programs that can actually make use of the same coding
• 04:15 structure, which is kind of nice.
• 04:17 Because once you start learning this, you can port it to other places.
• 04:20 But even bigger than that, as long as there's a library available to connect to
• 04:24 in Windows, even though this is outside the scope of this particular course.
• 04:29 If you learn VBA well,
• 04:30 you can actually control other Windows applications as well.
• 04:34 You can control things like Internet Explorer,
• 04:36 actually interact with the documents that you see on a web page and whatnot.
• 04:39 You can go and you control things like Access, that's an Office program.
• 04:42 But you can also start writing into other things where you're actually changing
• 04:45 the behavior of Windows as well, which is actually really kind of a cool thing.
• 04:49 So this is why learning VBA is so important.
• 04:52 Number one, it's easy as compared to any other programming language.
• 04:55 Number two, it's super powerful and it can allow you to do an awful lot of things.
• 04:59 I'm very excited to be bringing you this course, and
• 05:01 I hope that you enjoy it as we go through this.

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