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Microsoft Excel personal macro workbook.


Personal Macro Excel Workbook

          We have already explored different Excel VBA macros here, here, and here, . While the power of Excel VBA is limited only by our creative imagination, the real limitation of a typical VBA code comes from the fact that it resides in the workbook where it was saved, and as such, can only be revoked while this file is open. This is where the personal macro workbook comes into play: if we save our code in this centralized place, we could use it in any Excel workbook on our local drive. This productivity hack would help us perform repetitive tasks (formatting and data presentation pet peeves, anyone) by automating them. The easiest way to save your code into PERSONAL.XLSB workbook is through recording a macro.

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Using Excel IFS and SWITCH functions.


Using Excel IFS and SWITCH Functions

          Making Rent vs. Buy decisions always seemed like a no-brainer to me. If you hold on to your purchase long enough, you will be saving money: be it a car or a computer software. Case in point: it costs only $ 109.99 to purchase a license for Excel 2016 vs $69.99/year to lease Office 365 Personal, which includes Excel, as well as other Office products. Assuming you only need to use one product that truly matters, and you will use it for more than 19 months, buying is cheaper than renting. The longer you use the product without upgrading, the more money you save. This held true until February of this year, when Microsoft introduced 6 new functions available exclusively to Office 365 subscribers: TEXTJOIN, CONCAT, IFS, SWITCH, MAXIFS and MINIFS. This addition alone, coupled with introduction of Funnel charts might steer more users towards the subscription model. In this post we will review the IFS and SWITCH functions. Let’s say goodbye to nested if functions , we have already discussed on this blog.
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Using Nested If Statements.


Nested IF Function

          A reader asked me to explain logic behind the formula used in my Holiday Email post. That solution involved using multiple IF functions as arguments within another IF function, technique also known as nested IF logic. I find that the best way to use nested if functionality is through using decision trees AND Excel’s VBA syntax. Charting a decision tree will help us better understand the task at hand, and putting various conditions and the ways to handle them in writing, will prepare us to enter necessary formula in Excel.

          Let’s suppose that we need to implement the following logic with 4 possible scenarios. If the value of cell 1 is string “Case 1” AND cell 2 is string “Case 2”, we need the output to be 4. If cell 1 equals “Case 1”, but cell 2 does NOT equal “Case 2”, we need the output to be 3. If cell 1 does NOT equal “Case 1” , but cell 2 equals “Case 2”, the output should be 2. Finally, if cell 1 does not equal “Case 1”, NOR cell 2 equals “Case 2”, the output is 1. Hopefully, using the decision tree below makes it easier to conceptualize these scenarios.
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Creating user-defined Excel functions (UDFs) – Temperature Conversion and BMI Calculation functions from scratch.

Excel UDF, custom function to convert temperatures and BMI calculator


         Our last two posts focused on using, or working with somebody else’s VBA code. This article will focus on creating UDF functions from scratch. We will start with a simple temperature conversion from Celsius to Fahreheit, and vice versa. We will then calculate metric Body Mass Index (BMI), graduating to an imperial BMI calculation with 3 variables.

         Since we’ve already worked with VBA code, we know some basic syntax rules for our future functions:

                  1. Start out with Option Explicit statement.
         Note : Option Explicit statement forces explicit declaration of our variables, and gives us an error message if we have a typo instead of performing incorrect calculations.
                  2. Define our function name and its parameter(s)
                   Function FunctionName(Parameter DataType) As DataType.
         Note : VBA makes definining data types optional, but it is a good habit to have.
                  3. Perform our calculations: Your code goes here.
                  4. Exit function and return it’s value: End Function.

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