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VARIABLES AND CONSTANTS IN EXCEL VISUAL BASIC
Part four of an eight-part series of blogs
This blog explains the nuts and bolts of Excel VBA variables, including how to declare them, how to set their scope and all sorts of other tips and tricks. The blog also covers constants in Excel macros.
- Variables in Excel Visual Basic macros
- What is a Variable? VBA macro variables.
- Declaring Variables in Visual Basic for Applications
- Using Variables (Assigning and Retrieving Values) (this article)
- Forcing Declaration of Variables (Option Explicit)
- Useful Things to Know about Variables
- The Scope of Variables in VBA programs
- Constants in Excel Visual Basic for Applications
This blog is part of our Excel macros online tutorial series. Alternatively, we run training courses in the UK in Excel and also in Visual Basic for Applications (and are always looking for partners in the US or other English-language countries!).
Using Variables (Assigning and Retrieving Values)
First, a quick reminder of what we're trying to do with our macro:
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| We're trying to copy the vote ... | ... into the results sheet |
There are only two basic commands with a variable - you can either assign a value to it, or read a value from it:
'put the current cell value into the variable HeroName
HeroName = ActiveCell.Value
'retrieve value from variable HeroName and store it in the current cell
ActiveCell.Value = HeroName
Bearing this in mind, let's have a look at our macro (it's listed in full at the bottom of this page). First, we declare the variables we're going to use:
Sub RecordVote()
'the name of each superhero
Dim HeroName As String
'the rating assigned to them
Dim HeroRating As Long
The next thing to do is to find out the current hero's name and rating, and store these in variables:
'go to the votes sheet and get the value of the superhero, and their rating
Worksheets("Votes").Select
HeroName = Range("C4").Value
HeroRating = Range("C6").Value
Now we need to go the results sheet, and go down to the cell where the votes will be recorded:
'go to top of results
Worksheets("Results").Select
Range("B4").Select
'go to first blank cell
ActiveCell.End(xlDown).Select
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
Now it's simply a case of transferring the information we've stored in the two variables into the worksheet:
'write variable values into this blank row
ActiveCell.Value = HeroName
ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Value = HeroRating
Finally (and this bit has nothing to do with variables), I've put two slightly complicated lines to copy the formatting down from the row above:
'copy formats from cell above (included here just to make macro complete)
Range(ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 0), ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 1)).Copy
ActiveCell.PasteSpecial xlPasteFormats
Application.CutCopyMode = False
Here's the full code, if you want to try it out:
Sub RecordVote()
'the name of each superhero
Dim HeroName As String
'the rating assigned to them
Dim HeroRating As Long
'go to the votes sheet and get the value of the superhero, and their rating
Worksheets("Votes").Select
HeroName = Range("C4").Value
HeroRating = Range("C6").Value
'go to top of results
Worksheets("Results").Select
Range("B4").Select
'go to first blank cell
ActiveCell.End(xlDown).Select
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
'write variable values into this blank row
ActiveCell.Value = HeroName
ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Value = HeroRating
'copy formats from cell above (included here just to make macro complete)
Range(ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 0), ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 1)).Copy
ActiveCell.PasteSpecial xlPasteFormats
Application.CutCopyMode = False
End Sub
Variables are that simple!
VARIABLES AND CONSTANTS IN EXCEL VISUAL BASIC
Part four of an eight-part series of blogs
This blog explains the nuts and bolts of Excel VBA variables, including how to declare them, how to set their scope and all sorts of other tips and tricks. The blog also covers constants in Excel macros.
- Variables in Excel Visual Basic macros
- What is a Variable? VBA macro variables.
- Declaring Variables in Visual Basic for Applications
- Using Variables (Assigning and Retrieving Values) (this article)
- Forcing Declaration of Variables (Option Explicit)
- Useful Things to Know about Variables
- The Scope of Variables in VBA programs
- Constants in Excel Visual Basic for Applications
This blog is part of our Excel macros online tutorial series. Alternatively, we run training courses in the UK in Excel and also in Visual Basic for Applications (and are always looking for partners in the US or other English-language countries!).
Comments on this blog
This blog has 4 comments:
Hi! I found extremely usefull this blog and the explanations are very clear. So far i have follow all the examples in the line of learning to use Macros in Excel 2010 but i found in a dead end: in the full code found in the post "Using Variables(Assigning and Retrieving Values", the line that says : "ActiveCell.Offset(0,1).Value= HeroRating" gives me an error when i execute the marco, recording the name and rating of the hero i wrote in the last line of my sheet, that is row #1048576. Please give me some help about this because i need learn basic VBA in Excel for my University Tesis.
Thank´s a lot for this priceless blog.
Hi
Thanks for the kind comments. I'm afraid I can't go through specific macros, but I can give you a couple of hints.
Firstly, when running your macros press F8 to step through them line by line, and after running each line (they appear in yellow) check back in Excel that the active cell is where you think it should be.
Secondly, you've ended up on the last row of the spreadsheet. The usual way to get there is with a command like:
ActiveCell.End(xlDown).Select
If you execute this at the bottom of a column of cells, you'll end up at the bottom of a worksheet.