VBA was featured as the language used in MS-Access, a tool designed for business information systems, employing the classic Database – logic – presentation architecture. VBA unleashed Excel out of its chains into the game of Windows development environment.

The data of course is stored in a table in another Worksheet.įorcing a Worksheet to serve as a user interface User Forms changes the gameĪs Excel became so popular and ingrained in the work of almost every profession, it yearned to evolve into a native Windows development tool, similar to its older brothers: VB and. Just to show you it can be done, I’m showing here a user interface for creating invoices I implemented over Worksheets. However, reaching the level of user experience, pixel-perfect and flexibility overall we’re used to when working with classic Windows-based applications – is still very challenging, to the point it doesn’t make sense. With skills, UX design understanding and creativity, one can do wonders with Excel Worksheets. Still, while software user experience evolved to be a science and art, with the notion of event-driven user interfaces that adhere to a business flow and the human’s psychology, the good old grid of cells remains the fundamental canvas for crafting a user experience in Excel.ĭon’t’ get me wrong. The rich formatting, layout options, multiple tabs, GUI controls and of course VBA, allowed for more and more types of solutions to be developed with Excel and serve the business community on its diversity.įrom financial modeling, through engineering, business analytics, operations, manufacturing, Database-driven information systems and many more – it seems Excel can be shaped and carved to meet almost every need out there. With time, electronic spreadsheets, with Excel taking the lead, have evolved to be one of the most powerful ubiquitous software on the table of every person. The more sophisticated models and solutions possible to be realized with Excel – the more pivotal the user experience, UX for short, became. Powerful as it were, in front of every model or application, there’s the user. No fancy pixel-perfect, charts or formatting capabilities were available. The “magic” was in the real-time calculating grid of cells. The origins of Excel are rooted in Lotus 1-2-3, the first widely-adopted electronic spreadsheet that boomed in the first years of personal computing. The inherent limitations of Excel Worksheets as a user interface

This launch today made it an easy choice for my Blog post subject today 😊. This course, titled Beyond Excel Boundaries with User Forms: Deliver a Professional User Experience, covers User Forms implementation as the user interface for Excel-based business applications.

Today I launched my fifth course in the Computer Programming and Databases with Excel VBA and SQL program.

Excel vba userform templates downloads