VBA or Office.JS! The dialogue of dilemma.

 

I have been a part of one Office.JS WhatsApp group for a long and it's not an ordinary group at all! I found a bunch of good excel professionals there but still, no conversation had happened in that group since it's been created. 

I know it's too early to decide or compare the interests of people for Office Js but it's also a reality that we do not have a proper driving force that can lead us to do some learning and experiment with the Office JS framework. We learned Excel and VBA just by doing some random stuff here and there and developed interests too. Even the freshers of this phase, tending to learn VBA because it's easier to understand and write. 

Python is still evolving to compete with VBA in all areas. I do not know whether people will accept Python as an interface for office automation or not! Most data scientists are learning python these days but excel is not only used for data science alone. Excel with VBA making that framework easy to build various business solutions prototypes, report automation, and somehow ERPs too! So, python has still a very long to chase to compete with Excel+VBA in all areas. 

If Office Js is the output of having thought of creating macros for a universal platform then they should have adopted & implemented C# and ASP.NET framework for the office automation scripting. It is cross-platform, adaptable, modern and most importantly it is user-friendlier than office JS in the context of coding! I would say, with just a little effort, current VBA professionals would have had become a part of that framework but I do not know about the likable future of Office JS. Please comment on your opinion here as well. 

are you guys a part of any "ACTIVE" group on Office Js? Please let us know. So we could join them as well and learn to support the future!

#OfficeJS #excel #vba #office365 #javascript #python #Csharp

ActiveObjects Turn back to me!

#excelvba #vba #excel

I was in the huge misunderstanding that ActiveSheet, ActiveCell objects are created normally by the recorded Marcos and so, in the dynamic programming/automation we should avoid using that because of its ACTIVE properties. I followed that for a long but today when I was working on creating a simple customized TreeView Tool for worksheet creating out of checkboxes, I came into the situation where I have to use Application. Caller property so I can determine dynamically what object has called the central module to apply further changes. We know that CheckBoxes are the Worksheet objects or we can say that the parent object of Checkbox control is the worksheet. I further noticed that, if I have to use the same TreeView tool across multiple sheets then my code should be worksheet independent. So to achieve that dynamically, I fall back to my own discarded thoughts which are to avoid ActiveObjects.

I have to use the ActiveSheet property to determine which object has called the module! Such uncertainty. But I learned a lot today.

Share your thoughts on using ActiveObjects as well.

Regards

Kamal.

Consolidating Multiple Sheets into ONE New Sheet using VBA.

Delete Target Sheet Automatically if the Target Sheet is Unprotected!

Friend asked me a little query.

he wants VBA to delete his Target Sheet automatically if the Target Sheet is Unprotected!

Now, that's something easy but it's not! Not at all! unless you know the best way to achieve that task using an available property of the Sheet Object.

There's a Sheet property called,."ProtectContents"

Here's how you can perform..

Step 1: Choose TargetSheet
Step 2: Open Code Editor for that Target Sheet Object from VBE.
Step 3: Paste Below Code

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    On Error Resume Next
    Application.DisplayAlerts = False
    If Sheets("SheetName").ProtectContents = False Then
        Sheets("SheetName").Delete
    End If
    Application.DisplayAlerts = True
    On Error GoTo 0
End Sub

That's it!

Now if someone will illegally try to crack your Target Sheet password from your workbook then after any cell selection by the user will trigger the above Sheet Selection Event.

The Code further investigate using the mentioned property whether the sheet is protected or not. if it is unprotected instead of Protected then Code will delete the sheet in a fraction of seconds.

Many of us do have an idea of this and many of us would not. So this strategy will help freelancers to make their templates more commercially protected!

Keep Learning.
Kamal Bharakhda

Questions Should be asked by Excel VBA Developer to their Clients

#Discussions

Questions Should be asked by Excel VBA Developer to their Clients before initiating the project.

We all are Learning lots of things as freelancers every day. Especially Non Technical part of the project. And you know it's the most important part of the project where we are getting to know everything before we begin.

I'm inviting you here to take part in this post. I hope this post will help each member of the group in their freelancing carrier.

General Category's Questions!

1. What does your business actually do? (Explain in Short!)
2. Why You want this application?
3. What current setup you have to simplify the process?
4. Why do you want to develop this application on Excel VBA Framework?
5. Have you ever tried to research for the already available solutions? If Yes, then what makes you not to choose them for the process?
6. Do you have your competitors? If Yes, then what they are using for the same process?

Application-oriented questions

1. Do you want the application to run on how many systems? (1/2/Multiple)
2. Do you want to keep your database in Excel or Outside of it?
3. If you want to keep your database outside then where you exactly want to place? (In Online Servers or in your Local System. because if you want your application should run on two or more systems then we have to centralize the database so every system can synchronize equally at a time.)
4. Do you want an application that should have a user-based login system? Like Admin will see everything and Employee will access few things of the system.
5. Will this application have anything effective for the professional year changes?
6. I will require information about each step of the application. because we will design a table of forms to save the information in the database. like, Username, address, etc.. etc..
7. Which of the operating system are you using?
8. Which of the Microsoft Office version are you using?

Choose User Interfaces for your application.

1. Example 1
2. Example 2
3. Example 3

In this section, you have to link here Your earlier made templates or VBA application's user interfaces. Let the client decide what he wants. You can also show examples of others which you can design on your own.

Please make comments with your suggestions and ideas. Let all the members will gain more benefits. :)

Kamal Bharakhda

Finding a String within a List of Strings

Don't you think it's too easy to perform such a procedure using INSTR function?
Yup, it's damn easy but the reason behind writing this post was a little bit core side of the problem.
Let's take an example here

suppose you have 100 cells containing a string. Now, you want to extract the cell address where the cell's string contains "1p" or anything else.
Now, Cell's string could have been anything but you have to find a specific string within a set of cells.
It's very easy to find such using following code.

dim I as Long 
For I = 1 to 100 Step 1
if VBA.Instr(1,Cells(I,1).value, "1p") > 0 then 
msgbox .cells(i,1).Address
end if 
Next I 

Above code will simply give you the address of the matching cell with string. But here comes the catch. String 1p is in standard or lower case and you might don't know in the cells which case would be there so, to avoid that confusion programmer generally uses the following line using OR logical treatment.

dim I as Long 
For I = 1 to 100 Step 1
if VBA.Instr(1,Cells(I,1).value, "1p") > 0 or VBA.Instr(1,Cells(I,1).value, "1P") then 
msgbox .cells(i,1).Address
end if 
Next I

But believe me, to execute the proper way is a bit easy and different using inbuild VBA functions. Because more stuff on the logical operation the processor would take more time to process it. So better is to use the following idea to process the same thing using  UCASE function.

dim I as Long 
For I = 1 to 100 Step 1
if VBA.Instr(1,UCASE(Cells(I,1).value), UCASE("1p")) > 0  then 
msgbox .cells(i,1).Address
end if 
Next I

Function UCASE will consider each alphabet in the string as UPPER case and that's how you bypass the CASE issue while finding them and matching the string withing string.

Our group member Anil Khanna Karunakaran has asked my this query at personal so I thought this could be a learning point for many friends.
See these kinds of little techniques are a very important part of programmers. Actually, this small difference actually defines the programmers sometimes in some situations.

Moral of the story is everything is capable to provide results. but the good programmers will do it more creative way. So, kindly share your techniques here with us to solve some general issues.

- Kamal Bharakhda

Build Searchable Dropdown Control using ComboBox and ListBox

Steps to achieve this control

Step 1: Insert an Userform
Step 2: Insert TextBox from Toolbar
Step 3: Insert ListBox from Toolbar
Step 6: Write Few names in Sheet1 in column 1
Step 7: Insert a button on a worksheet and write the following code to it.

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
    UserForm1.Show
End Sub

Step 4: Change ListBox Heigh to 0 from Properties window.
Step 5: Copy Following Code

Private Sub ListBox1_DblClick(ByVal Cancel As MSForms.ReturnBoolean)
    
    MsgBox Me.ListBox1.List(Me.ListBox1.ListIndex)
    
End Sub

Private Sub TextBox1_Change()
    
    Dim I As Long, tmp As String, arr() As String
    Dim J As Long, ArrCount As Long, K As Long
    
    With Me.ListBox1
        .Clear
        .Height = 0
    End With
    
    If Me.TextBox1.Value = vbNullString Then Exit Sub
    
    tmp = vbNullString
    ArrCount = 0
    
    'Filling the Array with Values which matches the criteria
    With Sheet1
        J = .Cells(.Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row
        For I = 1 To J Step 1
            If InStr(1, .Cells(I, 1).Value, Me.TextBox1.Text) > 0 Then
                tmp = tmp & .Cells(I, 1).Value & "|"
            End If
        Next I
    End With
    
    'Filling Listbox
    With Me.ListBox1
        .Top = Me.TextBox1.Height + Me.TextBox1.Top
        If tmp <> vbNullString Then
            tmp = VBA.Left(tmp, Len(tmp) - 1)
            Erase arr
            arr = VBA.Split(tmp, "|")
            ArrCount = UBound(arr)
            For K = 0 To ArrCount Step 1
                .AddItem arr(K)
            Next K
            .Height = 100
        Else
            .AddItem "No Item Found"
            .Height = 18
        End If
    End With
    
    'Code By Kamal Bharakhda
    
End Sub