VBA is a coding language used by millions of people across the world to automate tasks in Microsoft Office products. It’s a language that has been around for decades and is one of the easiest coding languages to learn if you don’t have a computer science background. With its endless popularity in such programs as Excel, it might come as a surprise that there is this lingering fear VBA is going to be removed from Microsoft Office in the near future. I constantly see questions on forums asking “is it worth learning VBA at this point in time?” or “when will VBA stop working?” or better yet, “what is replacing VBA?”.

Don’t get me wrong, these are all valid questions; especially with the way Microsoft has treated VBA over the past 10 years. But there is hope and through this article, I will present my thoughts and predictions about the so-called “inevitable death” of the VBA coding language.

Why Learn VBA Today?

To simply put it, it’s something that virtually anyone can teach themselves with very little effort.

Now before I get too far, let’s back up and talk about me for a minute. I, Chris Newman, founder of TheSpreadsheetGuru, am first and foremost a finance guy. Why is this important to clarify? Well, I want to stress I know nothing about computers, computer coding, or how it is physically possible to send information like this article through the air and into millions (ok, hundreds…) of digital devices to be read. Needless to say I am not the poster child to be somewhat authoritatively writing about a computer coding language.

But I am. How? Because VBA is something that makes sense to anyone familiar with Excel (or Word or PowerPoint). There’s no weird syntax like curly brackets or a complex lexicon of phrases to memorize, you simply write what you want to do and it is done.

But the real beauty of VBA and it’s ease of learning is the availability of the Macro Recorder. This feature allows you to click a record button and it will write code for every single thing you physically carry out on your screen. While it might not be the most efficient way to write the code, it writes it in a way that in most cases automates your process without any further modifications. Teaching yourself how to automate specific tasks can be as easy as using the recorder and copying the code it spits out.

Let’s get back to the question in the header, “Why learn VBA today?”

You Can Pretty Much Do ANYTHING!

Have you ever wished you could build your own phone app or website or even a robot to clean your house? I know I have and it’s somewhat depressing because unless you have a ton of money to pay someone to build your dream invention or are ridiculously smart, you’re never going to be able to build those things. I remember back to when I was an ambitious 22-year-old, fresh out of college and ready to conquer the world. Smartphones apps were in their infancy and I had an idea or two that was going to make me a millionaire. Lucky for me, Apple had a huge following and tons of educational content to help newbies like me learn to make apps. To make a short story even shorter, after a month of trying my hardest, I had gotten nowhere. There was simply too much to learn, and even basic coding concepts were not making any sense to me. I sadly had to scratch making my million dollar app from my “To Do” list.

Fast forward a year, and I’m starting to dive into VBA. With just a few lines of code, I am manipulating thousands of lines of data within fractions of seconds. I start to get fancy and make interfaces with buttons and sliders. I figure out how to pull data from the internet. I finally come to the realization that I can easily figure out how to do virtually anything I want with VBA and Excel and my whole world changed.

I’m assuming many of you VBA coders out there have a similar story where the abilities you discovered via VBA brought your wildest dreams to fruition. I’ve seen some many creative solutions out there utilizing VBA code. There are examples of using VBA to build games with opponent AI, animated charting, and business management interfaces. You can truly do amazing things with this simple language!

Expert Status

Learning how to use VBA is a very quick way to differentiate yourself from the millions of other Excel users throughout the world. Excel users instantaneously associate folks who utilize VBA as an advanced user and will look to them for help. Chances are, if you were able to teach yourself VBA, you are pretty good at searching for Excel help and you more than likely can provide solutions to others quickly even if you don’t know the solution off the top of your head (thank you Google!).

Tons of Documentation and Help

VBA is a language that is been around for a long time and because of this, there is a tremendous amount of documentation and help available to us. I am still amazed at the response time in Excel forums such as Mr Excel where you can literally get help/solutions provided to you within minutes (yes I said minutes) of posting a well-written question. Forum help was a major source of education for myself as I taught myself VBA or explored for ideas on how to tackle an automation I wanted to implement. The Excel VBA community is absolutely one of the most generous and responsive online communities out there and it is because of this, that folks are able to take advantage of this language everyday!

So now that we know why Excel users have reason to learn and use VBA, what are Microsoft’s current thoughts on the language? With VBA’s popularity among the user-base, it seems like a no-brainer that they would want to see it’s capabilities and uses grow, right?