How to start using macros and VBA?

Hi, I am in agreement with Jonathan Rae's opinion, but first of all for one who wants to start step by step in learning Macros and VBA, he/she will:
1- try to open the MO website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/about-macros-in-excel-HP.aspx this website is the mine of Microsoft Office Company and the IT encyclopedia to every user.
2- buy a book about EXCEL MACROS and VBA, and you can freely download e-books concern those topics in details as you wish,
3- try to begin in practical application on your laptop or PC for those application: this step should be in accompany with registering for courses in the required subject and/or downloading free youtube courses on how to use VBA and macros in excel.
This will give more efficient practice.
Note : learning VBA first will serve you to easily Macros applications learning I hope that will be useful

I'd recommend buying a book on VBA, something like Excel VBA Programming for dummies.
That should give you an overview of what you can and can't do using VBA.
Then you should, like with any programming language, extrapolate the skills you've learnt and decide if a problem you're facing can be best solved using macros.
To give you an example, when I was at university we had to simulate the growth of a forest within Excel.
Each cell would hold a new value on the next time step, and to keep a track of what each cell was going to be on the next time step I set up another identically sized grid next to the main forest, representing what the forest would look like on the next time step.
I used a simply macro to copy this over onto the current time step, say,100 times, to avoid having to manually copy and paste the forest over (which would have taken ages!).
Hope that helps!

hi,

first is recording ,:) ,then need5 basic elements

1. how to access row /columns

2. defining variable int,strings etc

3. conditional statements if,and ,or etc

4. looping  e.g for ,do while

5. most important is debugging

you can write most of your functions using these basic blocks

if you have not coded ever then start writing steps on paper first to help you code better

the easy jump start I think is to use record macro button and study the code there. Although, it is not the most efficient and effective way, but you will have a great start.

Learn from these URL: http://www.excel-vba.com/ and http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/forum.php

I'm not against the "buying a book" option but it's better if you join "live forum", sometime many tips you can get from them rather than a book.  

Hi,as per my understanding if any one is at the first step to start with vba.One has to start with basics, i mean to say is if the person is already using the excel then he knows that if a simple excel file is opened at his desktop.
He has to start analysing the3 basic steps namely1.
Which Workbook he want to use for processing2.
Which Sheet he wants to do the action3.
Which range he want to refer Try to write code for this3 things then you can start with all the complex ones as well.

I agree with the detailed explanation given by ....@ Lubna Al-Sharif