Excel VBA Software Design
About This Course
Microsoft Excel sits on almost every desk in Singapore, yet most users only ever scratch its surface. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the programming language built into Excel that lets you go beyond formulas and design your own software components — dashboards, data entry forms, automated reports and reusable utilities that run inside the workbooks your team already uses.
This programme is built around three objectives: to design simple VBA software components, to assess the functionality of the different elements that make them up, and to produce the design documentation that supports them. You will not simply record macros. You will plan what a component must do, choose the right methods and control elements to do it, build it, test it against its intended function, and document the design so that someone else can maintain it later.
The course is hands-on from the first session. Every concept is applied immediately in Excel on your own laptop, using practical business scenarios — a dashboard that refreshes itself, a user form that validates input before it reaches the worksheet, a routine that moves data between Excel and another Office application. Along the way you will learn to structure code so it stays readable, to handle errors so components fail gracefully, and to debug systematically instead of by guesswork.
No prior programming experience is assumed. If you are comfortable working with Excel worksheets and formulas, you have enough to begin. The pace suits working professionals — analysts, engineers, finance, HR and administrative staff who already rely on Excel daily. By the end of the course you will have designed, built and documented working VBA components that you can take straight back to your workplace and continue to develop.
What You'll Learn
Topics covered are:
1. Design Excel Dashboard Components with VBA — identify what a dashboard has to report, break it into components, and design the layout, data flow and refresh logic before writing a single line of code.
2. Utilise VBA Methods — navigate the Visual Basic Editor and the Excel object model; record, read and rewrite a macro; work with ranges, worksheets and workbooks; write procedures and functions; declare variables and apply built-in methods to manipulate data accurately.
3. VBA Control Elements — apply loops, conditional statements and branching to control how your code runs and how it responds to user choices, and use arrays and collections to process large volumes of data efficiently.
4. VBA Functionalities and Interoperability — build custom worksheet functions, handle errors so components fail gracefully, automate repetitive tasks with events, and connect Excel with other Office applications and external data sources.
5. VBA User Defined Forms and Documentation — design user forms with buttons, text boxes, list boxes and input validation, then produce the design documentation that records what the component does, how it is structured and how to maintain it.
Throughout, you will assess the functionality of each element you build — checking that it does what the design intended, testing edge cases, and debugging where it does not. You will finish with a set of working, documented VBA components and, more importantly, a repeatable design method for building the next ones on your own.
Entry Requirements
Knowledge and Skills
• Able to operate computer functions with minimum Computer Literacy Level 2 based on ICAS Computer Skills Assessment Framework
• Minimum 3 GCE ‘O’ Levels Passes including English or WPL Level 5 (Average of Reading, Listening, Speaking & Writing Scores)
Attitude
• Positive Learning Attitude
• Enthusiastic Learner
Experience
• Minimum of 1 year of working experience.
• Minimum 18 years old