View the Course Outline
(Level 1 | Level 2)

Level 1: VBA Foundations for Microsoft Office

Level 1 VBA for Microsoft Office CD-ROMs will teach you to start thinking in terms of how you can make your work life simpler. The Level 1 CD-ROMs get you going in VBA by showing you the tools to start automating little tasks right away.

In this course, you will learn to:

• Get familiar with the Visual Basic Editor included in all of the Microsoft Office products.
• Learn to write VBA procedures that do complex calculations.
• Find out how to use a VBA procedure in an Access query or an Excel spreadsheet formula.
• Create custom toolbars and buttons to call your VBA code.
• Design forms that act as dialog boxes for your VBA solutions.
• Learn about events in forms and in the Office products and how you can use them to customize the way each product works.
• Find out about object models and how they are organized.

To get the most out of VBA Foundations for Microsoft Office, you must be very comfortable with the interactive aspects of a Microsoft Office product such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Microsoft Word. Prior programming experience is helpful, but not required.

2.0 Writing VBA Procedures
Overview of the Visual Basic Editor
Working with the Project Explorer
Creating Simple Procedures
Understanding the Code Window
Customizing the Visual Basic Editor

3.0 Working with Variables and Constants
What Is a Variable?
Data Types
Using Constants

4.0 Visual Basic Editor Techniques
Writing Code Efficiently
Taking Advantage of IntelliSense
Optional and Named Arguments

13.0 Putting It All Together
Assembling the Pieces
Building a Solution in Excel
Using the Solution in Word
Where Are You Going From Here?

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Level 2: VBA Solutions for Microsoft Office

Understanding how VBA works opens up a whole world of possibilities for making tasks with your computer easier. The Level 2 VBA CD-ROMs teach you how to begin solving more complex work problems.

In this course, you will learn to:

• Learn about the Object Browser and online Help-the tools you’ll need to figure out any product’s object model.
• Find out how to determine what objects the user is working with when your code runs.
• Get familiar with the techniques you’ll need to create solutions that use the features of more than one product.
• Learn how to use combo boxes and list boxes in the forms you create.
• Find out how to open a table in a database to read and change its records.
• Explore different techniques you can use to add data to an Excel workbook.
• Learn how to create charts from code using information in Excel or the result of a database query.
• Find out how to get information from Word documents to create new documents or PowerPoint presentations.
• See how you can automatically send an Outlook e-mail message while you’re working in Excel or Word.

To get the most out of VBA Solutions for Microsoft Office, you must understand basic programming concepts such as control structures, looping structures, and variables. You must also be familiar with creating simple procedures in any VBA host, such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Microsoft Word.

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Jan Fransen has been working to educate people in the best ways to use Microsoft products for more than 10 years. She's written both data-based and document-based applications for large and small companies, and has helped hundreds of Office users and developers get started on the right foot through public and onsite training classes. As a writer, Jan has developed training courseware, contributed to books on Microsoft Office, written white papers for publication on MSDN, and created samples designed to help developers get up to speed quickly on new Microsoft products and features.

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