Become an Excel VBA Troubleshooter: Save Time and Earn More

Half way through this course, I have tried to construct a macro module to aid my daily Excel task. I was able to complete the work promptly thanks to the tools and methods introduced, such as add watch and immediate window, throughout the lectures. Having seen the benefit, I am now highly motivated to carry on and will definitely recommend this course to everyone who wants to improve their debugging skills!

Great content and great approach to teaching the content. This course does a great job showing how to apply coding best practices to (1) make your VBA code and syntax more efficient, more readable (to yourself and others), and easier to debug; and (2) test and debug VBA code methodically and professionally using all of Excel’s debugging tools.

Verbal and visual instruction was very clear. Nicely paced. Great sound quality. Answers to quiz questions included additional information about the selected answer (right or wrong), which was also helpful. What I did not like was the use of a quadratic equation as a main example. At times I found it distracting to both stay focused on the calculation (to some extent, like knowing what value/variable is in play) and to be learning the teacher’s main concepts. A more general example would have been better for me, and definitely more memorable letting me more easily recall the lesson ideas long after finishing the class. I also found the use of text box overlays at times distracting. Since they often repeated spoken details, I assume they are meant to reinforce ideas. But I had to frequently hit pause or rewind in order to confirm text was merely repetition because a few times this text was additional info. Maybe pausing briefly when such boxes appear would be better? Currently, it seems like by by not pausing for student the suggestion is to overlook them. One minor suggestion is to mentioned that the IMMEDIATE window box can be positioned below the CODE window so user can see both simultaneously, which makes actual work quicker sometimes. Again, it’s a preference. (I understand for training purposes you might want to constantly open and close the IMMEDIATE window instead.) I disagree slightly with the teacher’s somewhat absolute opinion that comments should only be included to answer Why not What (is being done by code). Yes, properly naming variables, methods, etc. does help. But we have extensive code and limited coders so it’s much easier to first skim the WHAT comments throughout to quickly visualize an outline of the intent and where these steps (possibly discussed in a summary at the top of method) happen vs. seeing only the summary and having to scroll around constantly. (Yes, keeping each method as short as possible is good. And yes, such additional commenting is a preference.) For us, the risk of being distracted by over commenting may exist, but being confused by naming and lack of comments (one coders clearly named variable is another coder’s head scratcher) is a real time waster. We error on the cautious side. Finally, including What comments at appropriate places in the code also helps our understaffed team satisfy a general contract obligation for legitimately providing ample code documentation. So it’s a two for. This is a great course and I recommend it.

A great reminder of some basic essentials of developing in VBA.