7 reasons you should write Excel macros

Microsoft Excel is a really powerful tool. It can do anything you want it to.

But like the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, it can seem almost too powerful sometimes.

If you’ve ever had to perform a long repetitive task in Excel, you probably already realised that the task could be automated using a VBA macro – a set of instructions that you give Excel, which it then executes for you.

But there’s always a dilemma:

If it takes me longer to learn how to write that VBA macro than it does to just manually perform the task, why should I spend the time to automate it?

That question is a valid one. Indeed you should weigh up the pros and cons of automating Excel in a given scenario, and you should only commit to creating a VBA macro if the benefits outweigh the downsides.

What are the benefits of writing Excel macros?

Manually performing mundane or repetitive tasks in Excel almost always represents a major lost opportunity. There are lots of great reasons to automate Excel and get it to do the grunt work for you, and they’re not always obvious.

Here are my top seven:

1. It’s reliable and accurate. Excel is a software program, and programs always perform their tasks exactly the same way every time. They are predictable and consistent. They don’t get tired or distracted, they don’t need to stop for lunch, and they don’t forget any steps.

2. It saves you time. Obviously there is some up-front time needed to write and test your VBA macro. But once it’s finished, the actual running of a VBA macro is fast.

3. It’s fun. Programming isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, obviously. On the other hand, it can be very satisfying and interesting to configure Excel to do exactly what you need it to. Most people will find it much more rewarding than blindly stepping through that boring task yourself. Once your macro has been successfully applied to the task, you can move on to higher-value work.

4. It’s a cost-saver. It doesn’t matter what your pay scale is. Spending less time on low-value tasks is a Very Good Thing. Harnessing the power of Excel to go faster and more reliably translates directly into cost savings for you or your employer.

5. It’s re-usable and it scales. Once you’ve written a VBA macro to handle a certain task, you can use it over and over again to perform that task in the future. It’s also pretty easy to tweak your macro to deal with new or changing situations (such as a column being in a different position, or new data being added). Once you’ve experienced the power and flexibility of your own VBA macro and what it can do for you, you’ll start to see opportunities everywhere.

6. It reveals your superhero alter-ego. Excel lists and tables can easily become so large that it’s not even feasible to perform a manual repetitive task over it. A VBA macro lets you do things that are otherwise impossible. Even a modest VBA macro can make you look like a super-hero. Which leads me to my final benefit:

7. It makes you marketable. Microsoft Office is everywhere these days, and its reach is always expanding. Employers already expect their staff to know their way around Excel. But a potential employer isn’t going to be all that impressed to know that you can click your way through a time-wasting, repetitive, low-value task in Excel. But watch their eyes light up when they see how much untapped efficiency you can magic up (like a super-hero) in their day-to-day operations. All with VBA macros!

As you can see, there are plenty of upsides to automating Excel using VBA macros. But you still need an answer to the dilemma that we opened with.

How do you shorten the time it takes to create a VBA macro?

That’s the key to unlocking all of the potential goodness that we’ve just run through. The process of creating and testing a VBA macro needs to be faster than performing the task manually.

How can that be done?

Think of VBA as being like a foreign language (because that’s really what it is). What if you could make Excel produce a written translation of your mouse clicks and keyboard input, in its own language of VBA?

There’s a way to make Excel do that job for you as well!

The trick is to harness Excel's own built-in 'Record Macro' function. With this function you can make Excel write out its own set of instructions based on your own manual mouse and keyboard input, in the language that it understands. 

Once you’ve unlocked the secrets of recording macros in the right way, you’ll be well on your way to using the awesome built-in power of Excel to automate any task.

I’ve created a quick and inexpensive e-course to get you up to speed straight away. It’s specifically designed to get you productive with Excel VBA macros as fast as humanly possible. I’m talking about right now. Today! You can be up and running in under an hour.

The short and easy-to-consume video lessons show you step-by-step how to rapidly combine the power of Excel’s own macro recording capability with some simple, proven methods to immediately leverage that in your own real-world scenarios.

Head over to https://VBAMacroHero.com/ to learn more and sign up.