This article launches a major explainer series under ExcelReInspired.com—a platform dedicated to reviving the true power and promise of Excel for real-world business problem-solving.
It’s titled bluntly: “VBA Will Never Be Obsolete.”
And it’s not a rant. It’s a reasoned walkthrough—technical, historical, and philosophical.
But first, a brief personal note.
I thought I had recorded this segment around 2:30 AM last night—part of a sketch that compared VBA to three things: microwaves, steering wheels, and… there was a fourth. It came back to me just now: the radio. That list matters more than it seems, and I’ll explain why.
We’re also breaking this first part into three digestible segments to focus on the basics before diving into examples. But let’s start at the root: What is VBA? What do we actually mean when we say “Visual Basic for Applications”?
1. Why You Need to Understand the Name: “Visual Basic for Applications”
To truly grasp VBA’s enduring relevance, we must unpack its name. Not just the acronym—but what the words “Visual”, “Basic”, and “for Applications” mean.
These aren’t just branding choices. Each word reflects a deliberate architectural design:
- Basic: Short for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, BASIC was created in the 1960s as a simple language anyone could learn. It opened the doors of computing to non-engineers. The ethos? You shouldn’t have to be a full-time developer to write useful programs.
- Visual: This refers to the event-driven programming model, where code is attached to GUI elements—forms, buttons, worksheets. Instead of typing everything from scratch, users could see their interface and wire it to behaviour.
- For Applications: VBA was never a standalone programming language. It was designed to sit inside host applications (like Excel, Word, Access) and manipulate their object models. That’s critical: VBA isn’t just code. It’s code with power—because it’s embedded in applications millions use every day.
Put simply: VBA empowers domain experts to automate their work within the tools they already use.
2. The Analogy: Microwaves, Steering Wheels, and Radios
To explain VBA’s role in the modern enterprise, here’s a helpful analogy. Think of:
- Microwaves: You don’t reinvent how heat works. You just press a button. VBA is like that button—it provides easy access to powerful underlying capabilities, like data connectivity via ADO or complex recalculations.
- Steering wheels: They don’t make the car move. But without one, you wouldn’t get where you’re going. VBA doesn’t create Excel. But it lets you control it, shape it, direct it to enterprise goals.
- Radios: Simple interface. Complex network underneath. VBA is your dial into the Excel object model. Tune it right, and you pick up everything from formulas to file systems.
The point? VBA is not about raw power. It’s about precision control over a platform already rich with capabilities.
3. What This Series Will Cover
This series will walk you through:
- The technical foundations of VBA—what it is and what it is not.
- Real-world business use cases that modern “cloud-based” solutions can’t match.
- Why automation, data access, and control are more achievable with VBA than many of its so-called replacements.
- How social media has distorted perceptions of Excel, VBA, and enterprise automation.
We’ll also include practical demonstrations: working VBA examples from enterprise budgeting, reconciliation, consolidation, and more. Each one will show what’s possible when VBA is understood not as a “legacy scripting tool” but as a strategic productivity engine.
Final Thought (For Now)
The common narrative today is that VBA is outdated, replaced by Power Automate, Python, or Office Scripts. But that view is often based on a misunderstanding of what VBA actually is.
VBA is not obsolete. It’s misunderstood.
And that misunderstanding costs businesses time, money, and opportunity.
Let’s fix that—one myth at a time.
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