How to insert and run VBA code in Excel - tutorial for beginners

This is a short step-by-step tutorial for beginners showing how to add VBA code (Visual Basic for Applications code) to your Excel workbook and run this macro to solve your spreadsheet tasks.

Most people like me and you are not real Microsoft Office gurus. So, we may not know all specificities of calling this or that option, and we cannot tell the difference between VBA execution speed in different Excel versions. We use Excel as a tool for processing our applied data.

Suppose you need to change your data in some way. You googled a lot and found a VBA macro that solves your task. However, your knowledge of VBA leaves much to be desired. Feel free to study this step-by-step guide to be able to use the code you found:

Insert VBA code to Excel Workbook

For this example, we are going to use a VBA macro to remove line breaks from the current worksheet.

  1. Open your workbook in Excel.
  2. Press Alt + F11 to open Visual Basic Editor (VBE).
    Excel Visual Basic Editor window
  3. Right-click on your workbook name in the "Project-VBAProject" pane (at the top left corner of the editor window) and select Insert -> Module from the context menu.
    Insert a new VBA module to the Excel workbook
  4. Copy the VBA code (from a web-page etc.) and paste it to the right pane of the VBA editor ("Module1" window).
    Paste the code to the VBA module

  5. Tip: Speed up macro execution

    If the code of your VBA macro does not contain the following lines in the beginning:

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual

    Then add the following lines to get your macro to work faster (see the screenshots above):

    • To the very beginning of the code, after all code lines that start with Dim (if there are no "Dim" lines, then add them right after the Sub line):
      Application.ScreenUpdating = False
      Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
    • To the very of the code, before End Sub:
      Application.ScreenUpdating = True
      Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic

    These lines, as their names suggest, turn off screen refresh and recalculating the workbook's formulas before running the macro.

    After the code is executed, everything is turned back on. As a result, the performance is increased from 10% to 500% (aha, the macro works 5 times faster if it continuously manipulates the cells' contents).

  6. Save your workbook as "Excel macro-enabled workbook".

    Press Crl + S, then click the "No" button in the "The following features cannot be saved in macro-free workbook" warning dialog.
    The following features cannot be saved in macro-free workbook

    The "Save as" dialog will open. Choose "Excel macro-enabled workbook" from the "Save as type" drop-down list and click the Save button.
    Save your workbook as Excel macro-enabled workbook

  7. Press Alt + Q to close the Editor window and switch back to your workbook.

How to run VBA macros in Excel

When you want to run the VBA code that you added as described in the section above: press Alt+F8 to open the "Macro" dialog.

Then select the wanted macro from the "Macro Name" list and click the "Run" button.
Press Alt+F8 to run the VBA macro

Table of contents

256 comments

  1. I want to creat a sequence from 1 to infonity and skip all ending zero number such that 10,20,30,.... Also no skip any indices

  2. Hello can VBA code be inserted into Excel 365? if so how?

  3. Hi,

    I'm trying to add a blank row between every row.
    After running the VBA code, I get an error 6 - overflow.

    When debugging, it looks like there's an issue with the following string:
    CountRow = rng.EntireRow.Count

    Please help me resolve this <3

  4. Hello,
    I need to use VBA in a worksheet_change event instead of formula, so you can leave the cell empty ready for user interface, or when the conditions are met the value can be put in the cell automatically and protected at the same time. I am looking to autopopulate previously entered data based on the client's unique identifier. This is my formula, which works/allows for the formula to auto-populate/return data BUT it doesn not allow for data entry if there is no match/data to return once the sheet is protected?
    =IFERROR(INDEX($C$7:C7,MATCH($A$7:$A$6001,$A$7:$A$6001,0))," ")

  5. Hi, I'm looking for a solution that create a button to print excel worksheet with print range A2:AA73 from a workbook into pdf and save a copy of pdf in specific file location and file name will be based on each sheet cell value at AD2

    Can you help me with how to code that part? I'll be really appreciated your help.

  6. Hi everyone,
    can you please help me on writing VBA code in excel as per my requirement:
    Requirement:
    In Cell: D23 (containing formula value automatically generated on every 15 minutes)
    In column c23=current time value is showing
    In Cell "A30:A54" (value started from 9.30, 9.15, 10.00, 10.15, 10.30, 10.45, 12.00, 12.15, 12.30, 12.45, 13.00, 13.15, 13.30, 13.45, 14.00, 14.15, 14.30, 14.45, 15.00, 15.15, 15.30 respecitively each time value in each row)

    Now I want to copy cell D23 value and Paste value only inside the Cell Range : B30:B54 where Cell C23=matches with Cell A30:A54).

    Kindly help to write code on VBA in excel.

  7. Thank you very much

  8. thanks

  9. Hi, I'm looking for a solution that is I created a report on excel and I also created a button to export that report excel file into a pdf and its location is on Sharepoint, not in some folder only on Computer. Can you help me with how to code that part? I'll be really appreciated your help.

  10. Is there a code set or technique to get an excel sheet to read all the documents in a folder, their headers (if they are word documents) and then build a hyperlink list with colums that display data fields from the header like dates/vital-info/etc.

    Is this possible?

  11. Hi
    Is there a code or tool in Excel to enable a cell pop up a number previously entered in another cell immediately that number is deleted?

  12. I've written a whole script which works in extracting all the information from a Questionnaire in word to excel. However, the only problem I've run into is when questions within the Questionnaire has tick box options. My current VB macro script just pulls in the box symbol, but not the words associated with the ticked box/next to the tick boxes. Is there a VB macro script you can recommend I can write which allows me to pick up the text associated with the ticked box instead?

  13. Hello,
    I need to learn coding in excell. Actually I want to use coding in excell for getting expenditures year wise. In excell sheet im going to fill cells with expenditures pertain to different years but i want excell to use codes and give those expenditures years wise as an easy reporting. Kindly guide me through this how could i get desired results, please.

  14. I have 2 Dropdown List with the same options (Included and Excluded) in different sheets. If I select " Included" in one dropdown list, it should also select "Included" on another dropdown list and vice versa. I need VBA code to crack this.

  15. I have an excel excel workbook .It has four sheets A, B, C, D .A, sheet information .Rowes' information is categorized in C column. VBA code so that the information contained in the Rowes can be found on the B sheet, the information on the C on the C sheet and the information on the D on the D sheet. want to .

  16. Hi
    I have 3 sheets work book. sheet1 'E,sheet 2 'N anf Sheet 3 'D'. It has 1000 rows in sheet 1. "H" column data catagary 'N' and 'D' two data type .I want to link data by N or D to other two sheets .

  17. this deleted active names as well so my entire excel has #name error now. is there a VBA that only deleted names that are not used

  18. I am having an excel wherein i have done some conditional formatting with color coding and i just want to copy the color codes to another fields, can you suggest a macro VBA so that i can run it?

  19. Hi

    May I request the expertise of those who are professionals in VBA. I'm planning to improve my procurement monitoring in excel using the VBA wherein I want to simplify the way I can search for the status of purchases. By simply typing the reference number in the search bar then the status would appear. Would that be possible in excel VBA. Thank you in advance for your help

  20. how i can give command in execel

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