Several Microsoft products have been designed to help you bring out your computer programming skills so you can make adaptations and share them with others, if necessary, by using Visual Basic for Applications.

MS applications, such as Word, Excel and Access have been carefully designed and updated over the years to be as functional and easy-to-use as possible. Straightforward task bars and ribbons boast many icons that ensure you can find the relevant command. After much use it is likely to be second nature for you to create documents, files and databases. However, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an integrated function on several MS products that can see you tweak software for your needs.

By following the computer language you can insert your own commands. This may sound like a complicated process but VBA is formulated so you can make changes without being an expert, if you do require more training, courses can help to expand your knowledge. You can choose the complexity of the functions that you wish to add to MS products. For instance, you may want to write a programme, which can also be called a macro, that will simply change the background colour of documents you are working on. On the other hand, if you are inputting data into an Excel workbook and a formula needs to be repetitively applied to the data then you may decide to create a macro that can do this at the touch of a button, saving you the time of manually performing this action via several commands.

This can have a vast impact on your working day and that of your colleagues and one of the great advantages to VBA is that once you create a macro they can be shared with your workers so they also get the benefit of the shortcuts. For example, if you are responsible for writing long documents that have various indents and titles, like those found in a script, it may be time consuming to make the correct indentations. However, VBA allows you to write programmes that indent speech, for instance, in the desired place. Once you have created this, you can then send the macro to your colleagues or interested parties so they can also use your programme in the same kind of document. This may be very useful in departments using MS Word, MS Excel and other MS applications as it can cut the time spent on formatting files.

The Developer tab in MS Word features icons that see you creating macros via the Record Macro function. At this point you enter the programme information, which features word commands. You can decide whether the macro applies to the document you are currently working on or whether you would like to make it available to all files that you write in word. For instance you may be working on text that you would like to colour and feature on a bright background as a one-off file.

In this instance, you can save the programme so it applies and is accessible from this document. However, if you prefer to make a command more general so all Word documents you create can access it, this is possible by saving it in a different location. You are free to create simple or more complex macros via VBA and training courses for more expert courses can help you get to grips with its in-depth functions.