Recorded macros are inflexible, so they cannot respond to changed or changing conditions. By adding VBA programming to your recorded macro you can give it intelligence so it can respond to changed situations. When it comes to repetitive actions within the macro itself, recorded macros are rather limited. If you want a recorded macro to repeat an action several times, you must manually repeat that action desired number of times when you record the macro.

But in VBA programming you can use loops to repeat these actions. There are many circumstances under which you will want to add decision making and efficient repetition to recorded macros. The only way to get these features is to manually add VBA program statements to your recorded macro. In VBA programming you can also regularly import the database into an Excel Sheet, format the data for display, generate a chart for the data, and then print the chart and format the report. You can also use VBA to control the execution of other applications and to automate the sharing of data between applications. With the help of VBA you can connect Excel to databases like SQL and Access.

You can use grids and other control of VBA to create report and custom forms. You can write formula and functions of Excel in VBA programming and use the in program to generate report automatically. To be proficient in VBA you must have knowledge of Visual Basic. Visual Basic (VB) is a third-generation event driven programming language and associated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model. Visual Basic was derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, access to databases using DAO, RDO, or ADO, and creation of ActiveX controls and objects.

Scripting languages such as VBA and VBScript are syntactically similar to Visual Basic, but perform differently. A programmer can put together an application using the components provided with Visual Basic itself. Programs written in Visual Basic can also use the Windows API, but doing so requires external function declarations. Visual Basic was designed to be easy to learn and use. The language not only allows programmers to create simple GUI applications, but can also develop complex applications as well. Programming in VB is a combination of visually arranging components or controls on a form, specifying attributes and actions of those components, and writing additional lines of code for more functionality.

Since default attributes and actions are defined for the components, a simple program can be created without the programmer having to write many lines of code. Performance problems were experienced by earlier versions, but with faster computers and native code compilation this has become less of an issue. VB 1.0 was introduced in 1991. The drag and drop design for creating the user interface is derived from a prototype form generator developed by Alan Cooper and his company called Tripod. Microsoft contracted with Cooper and his associates to develop Tripod into a programmable form system for Windows 3.

0, under the code name Ruby (no relation to the Ruby programming language). Tripod did not include a programming language at all. Microsoft decided to combine Ruby with the Basic language to create Visual Basic. The Ruby interface generator provided the "visual" part of Visual Basic and this was combined with the "EB" Embedded BASIC engine designed for Microsoft's abandoned "Omega" database system.

The ability to load dynamic link libraries containing additional controls (then called "gizmos") which later became the VBX interface were added to the product at the request of Bill Gates.

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