Navigating the Visual Basic Editor

Quick reference

• 00:05 So far, we are working with macros.
• 00:08 We've prerecorded steps that are available for us to replay whenever we want and
• 00:12 everything's all good, right?
• 00:15 The challenge is, is that we want to move ourselves to working with,
• 00:18 not just macros but with VBA.
• 00:19 The entire language itself.
• 00:21 And we wanna see what we can actually do with it.
• 00:24 In order to do that we need to get a little bit familiar with
• 00:27 the environment that we're gonna use to preserve programming.
• 00:30 This is the Visual Basic Editor or the VBE as we know it.
• 00:35 And you can find that on the Developer tab by clicking Visual Basic.
• 00:40 And that will launch you into a new window that looks like this.
• 00:43 I'm gonna show you another way to get in here as well.
• 00:46 I'm just gonna go and close this for right now.
• 00:48 There's a keyboard shortcut and the more you program,
• 00:50 the more you'll find that this becomes one of your go to keyboard shortcuts.
• 00:53 It's Alt+F11.
• 00:55 And Alt+F11, even if the developer tab is not available,
• 00:58 will launch you into the Visual Basic Editor, the VBE.
• 01:03 Now, this is a code studio that looks the same in every version of Excel,
• 01:07 from Excel 5 all the way through to Excel 2016 today.
• 01:11 There's been no changes to it whatsoever.
• 01:13 This is why I'm actually very comfortable teaching this course in Excel 2016 no
• 01:16 matter which version of Excel you absolutely have.
• 01:19 You'll notice that it's got the old classic toolbars, not ribbons or
• 01:22 anything like that.
• 01:23 And it's got a multi document interface, which is what we're used to,
• 01:27 where all of our documents fit into one particular piece.
• 01:30 They don't all have their own individual container like we see in
• 01:33 Excel 2013 and 16.
• 01:33 Now, some key parts that I want to make you familiar with when you're in here.
• 01:39 On the left hand side we have a navigation tree.
• 01:42 And you'll notice that the workbook I've opened is called Navigation.xlsm.
• 01:47 And you'll see that we have a few different things in here.
• 01:49 We've got a Microsoft Excel Objects container that has the different
• 01:52 worksheets, as well as something for ThisWorkbook.
• 01:54 We see Modules with Module1.
• 01:57 This is what we actually call the Project Explorer and
• 02:01 if you ever lose it, go and click and close all these guys away here.
• 02:05 If you ever lose it, you can find it on the view menu under Project Explorer or
• 02:10 by pressing Ctrl+R, and that will bring it back up.
• 02:14 Another window that's useful in here is the Properties Window.
• 02:17 The Properties Window gives us the Properties of the selected objects.
• 02:21 So in this case here, we can see that it's Sheet1.
• 02:23 If I were to go and click on Module1,
• 02:25 it will tell me the properties of Module1 in ThisWorkbook.
• 02:28 It gives me a bunch of different properties there as well.
• 02:30 So this is something that can be useful.
• 02:32 Again, you can dismiss it.
• 02:35 There we go.
• 02:35 We can bring it back either by the menu or pressing F4 and
• 02:38 that will bring this guy back.
• 02:40 All right, cool.
• 02:41 So we've got our Properties Window.
• 02:42 I usually like to keep mine tucked just down in the bottom over here somewhere.
• 02:46 It gives me enough room to work with that I can play around with the stuff
• 02:49 that's up top and everything works well there.
• 02:52 Couple other windows that you may want available to you.
• 02:57 On the View tab we have Ctrl+G, gives us the Immediate Window.
• 03:01 I like to dock that down the bottom here where it shows up by default.
• 03:05 I'll get more into explaining what these do when we get into advanced debugging
• 03:08 a little bit later on.
• 03:09 But it's handy to have around.
• 03:11 I'm also gonna go into my View tab here, and
• 03:13 I'm gonna show the Locals Window and that comes up in this area.
• 03:17 Now I'm not really a huge fan of where this is docked,
• 03:20 because I like the Window for Locals a little bit taller.
• 03:23 So I'm gonna go and left click and drag this guy off.
• 03:25 Get him out into the main area here.
• 03:27 And then I'm gonna drag him onto the right side of the screen until we see it snap
• 03:31 like that.
• 03:31 And then we go, I've got a Locals Window.
• 03:34 It's empty right now, but that's okay.
• 03:37 There's one more window that you may want as well, which is called the Watch Window.
• 03:41 This one docks down in, beside Immediate, I'm okay with that.
• 03:45 Although I would generally make the immediate window just a little bit longer.
• 03:48 So this is the main frame work for what we end up working with.
• 03:52 The key part that we wanna recognize is in the middle is where our real big
• 03:55 canvas is.
• 03:56 And if I go double click on Module1 it's gonna open that up in the middle here and
• 04:00 this actually shows me the code that I'm working with.
• 04:03 And I've just maximized this.
• 04:04 I could go back if I wanted to and
• 04:06 click on this little guy here which will restore it and bring it down as well.
• 04:10 What's interesting about this again, this is a multi document interface.
• 04:13 So if I double click on ThisWorkbook it will open up the code pane for
• 04:16 ThisWorkbook.
• 04:16 And you can see that we've got a couple of different windows here.
• 04:19 But if I were to maximize Module1, it will take over the entire thing.
• 04:23 So, I can't see the other window.
• 04:26 If I go and click on this one again, I can.
• 04:28 I could flip over at him and maximize him.
• 04:30 Or I could click the little x, make him go away and
• 04:34 stick around in this particular place.
• 04:35 Okay, so this is some of the key stuff that we wanna be aware of.
• 04:39 There's also a couple of other things that you'll probably want to have as well.
• 04:42 And these are a couple of Toolbars.
• 04:44 We have a Debug toolbar, so I'm just gonna show that.
• 04:48 And I'm gonna bring him up here and snap him up into the top of my ribbon.
• 04:52 And I'm gonna go, actually not ribbon, Toolbar.
• 04:55 And we'll say, let's grab the Edit window or Edit form as well.
• 04:59 This gives us some more commands that we'll use when we're playing around with
• 05:01 our debugging, so I'll stab it in there.
• 05:02 You can of course, set toolbars you can pull them off and
• 05:04 have them where you like them.
• 05:06 But I like to keep all mine up at the top, give myself a little bit more space.
• 05:10 This is the Visual Basic Editor.
• 05:11 This is the environment that we're gonna use when we start programming.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.