Current Events > Why is VBA so deceptively simple yet so difficult to learn

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm trying to build a *really* simple database system in Excel using VBA and I find random tutorials here and there that kind of explain the code but it's all piecemeal.

I spent all day trying to put something together and the most progress I was able to make is a button that creates prompts where you enter data (names and classes) and it adds it to a table.

But I want to make something a little fancier that can generate like a calendar based off names and classes so you can see which students attended which classes for quick visualization. I know that's a slightly higher level than just making a list but it seems like it shouldn't be that hard. There are just so many strings of code to figure out

Tutorials and code snippets can only give a specific view on a language and its development environment. I don't use Excel or VBA all that much. Is this a more comprehensive documentation on it?: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/overview/excel

I will definitely explore that link out and I appreciate you sharing it.

And you're right, one-off tutorials on individual topics don't really cover enough to build a full product. And it doesn't help that I don't have a complete vision on how I even want the final product to look -_- I was imagining one page where you pull up a person's name and it shows their event history as a list and has an option to add additional events, and then another page that's arranged by months and the data prints to that automatically.

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I was making a career out of doing that when I was a consultant.

Ive never really used VB. Are people still using it for greenfield projects? I would have thought people would be using more of C# these days

I get by with powershell but I only use it for administration tasks and not really developing an actual system

Just drop a .gba file in it and it runs. You're overthinking it

I'm legitimately asking even though this sounds like something an elitist would say, but what are you trying to achieve through Excel rather than e.g. python.

Darklit_Minuet posted...

Just drop a .gba file in it and it runs. You're overthinking it

Lmfao

I beg to ask what would be case for doing this when Access was made to do precisely what you are trying to do in Excel

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Yeah I didn't even know it was really even a thing until some guy at my previous job put together this absurd database with all the personnel information, you could generate business trip planning charts and attach people as attendees and create emails to everyone attending the trip and stuff. I didn't even know it was Excel because the standard interface was completely gone.

I wish I had the skills to do something like that -_-

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I have seen that option but wasn't entirely sure how it worked. Especially if I want to do something like have a dropdown list that's populated by names and then another frame or list that shows their classes and class dates. I actually did find a script that did something similar but it was pulling everything at once (so like if Tom Smith had gone to two classes, it showed Tom Smith - Class 1 and Tom Smith - Class 2, which is just clunky and at that point why even bother).

Anteaterking posted...

I'm legitimately asking even though this sounds like something an elitist would say, but what are you trying to achieve through Excel rather than e.g. python.

My experience with computer languages ends with basic old school HTML and some R. At least Excel has a graphical interface, I would have zero idea where to start with something like Python.

Shinnokxz posted...

I beg to ask what would be case for doing this when Access was made to do precisely what you are trying to do in Excel

Simple reason that I have to do this on a Mac at work and Access is not available :(

unless, dumb idea, there's a way to build a template file out in Access and just convert that or import it into Excel

Hexenherz posted...

Simple reason that I have to do this on a Mac at work and Access is not available :(

unless, dumb idea, there's a way to build a template file out in Access and just convert that or import it into Excel

You can export tables into an Excel format and they'll come over as such, flat tables. You're obviously missing any sort of the functionality of the basics of what constitutes any sort of relational database structure. I don't know what you're endgame is with VBA, Excel, and databases though

Ive been dabbling a bit with VBA in excel, but Christ is the code editor ugly as shit

I don't suppose there's a better IDE for doing VBA?

Hexenherz posted...

database system in Excel

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e7c7e398.jpg

leafsRULE posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e7c7e398.jpg

That's sort of my reaction too, I don't think there's anything elegant going on in Excel with anything even close to relational databases, and I'm not sure what VBA could do to fix that

Shinnokxz posted...

That's sort of my reaction too, I don't think there's anything elegant going on in Excel with anything even close to relational databases, and I'm not sure what VBA could do to fix that

Definitely not elegant but Im sure you can brute force it to work that way. Definitely the wrong tool for the job, but, its a learning experience so why not

I am dumb and ended up just using regular formulas to create some basic interface elements in a worksheet. Like automatically updating calendar entries and dropdown lists so you can quickly pull up data by student or by class name. It is ugly but it works. I wish I could figure out how to make it look more official/fancier though.

Also Excel of MacOS is missing so much shit, too.