Excel VBA

What is included in the Excel VBA courses?

The manual which accompanies the text is highly simplified.

For each 2.5 hour session, a student would be expected to practise for the same amount of time ie to completely review the previous lesson.

An exercise is given after each lesson. This is be submitted as an email attachment before the next class. This is an extremely important requirement.

Each student of course has his or her own computer in class. Ideally a student would also have his or her own computer at home with an internet connection from which the homework can be sent (in spreadsheet form). The college facilities are available on other evenings (not Fridays), afternoons and some weekends. We not only allow such practice but encourage it to the point of instistence. The importance of revising after each lesson cannot be over emphasized!

At the course completion, subject to satisfactory performance, a Kensington College certificate is awarded.

Expert teaching in Excel VBA

Ed Robinson, who usually takes the Excel VBA course, is the author of the best-selling book, Excel VBA in easy steps.

A copy of this text is provided free with the course.

Update: The book appears to be a victim of its success and is now unobtainable. A printed copy is available free of charge upon registration for the course.

When do the Excel VBA Courses run?

10 x 2.5 hour lessons = 25 hours total.

Usually Tuesday Evenings 6-30-9pm. Day times to be arranged

A Thursday evening class is sometimes scheduled.

What do the courses cover?

Topics covered on this course are:

• To Edit Code
• Branching and Looping
• Assigning Variables
• The Excel Object Model
• The Range Object
• The WorkSheets Collection
• Arrays
• WorkSheet Events
• Variant Arrays
• WorkBook Events
• User Defined Functions
• The Application Object
• To Record and Run a Macro
• WorkSheet Functions
• The Personal WorkBook
• ActiveX Controls
• Project Explorer
• UserForms
• Excel VBA Help
• Classes
• Date and Time
• Interacting With Other Office Applications
• Collections
• API (Application Programming Interface)
• XML
• Saving data to file
• Accessing the Internet and retrieving data.
• Using DLLs

Payment may be made in full in advance but a £50 deposit is acceptable with the balance to be paid after the first class ( to make sure that you are happy!)
(Individual circumstantial concession may apply.)

Day Courses

This will run for 5 complete days as follows

Each day will consist of 2 sessions: 10 - 12.30 and 1.30 - 4.00.

The days in between should be considered as study sessions so that essentially this is a 2-week full time course. Exercises will be set for these interim days (Tue, Thur and w/ends) . It is essential that the exercises are submitted before the commencement of the next day's lesson. Programming is not learned in a couple of days. Programming can take years to learn, indeed the learning process never stops. (Having said that, it is possible to write some useful and practical code after 3 sessions.) Taking a 2-week course like this is something of a compromise but it is feasible so long as the attendee understands the amount of extra work required on his or her part. As for the evening course, it is essential to revise. In our experience, consecutive day courses without recap can simply faze a student.

Excel VBA is probably one of the easiest programming languages to learn. (The assistance offered by the macro recorder should not be underestimated!) The Excel spreadsheet itself is an almost ideal interface to learn with .....BUT... Excel VBA cannot be learned without practising.

Individual Courses

Can be arranged to suit asap. Please phone to arrange times.

Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga
This is an excellent reference for interested students for further reading. (It is not part of our course.)

Of course Excel VBA and financial modeling go hand in hand.

The first half of his very readable text utilizes Excel so you can read this half whilst doing the VBA course and then read the 2nd half which utilizes VBA after you have gained some expertise in VBA!