Visual Basic for Applications, also known as VBA, is a way in which Microsoft’s event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 is used. VBA is often regarded as the “most dreaded” programming language for computer scientists to learn, as it is essentially the programming language for Microsoft Excel and other Microsoft Office programs. Essentially, the programming language helps those who are technologically-savvy to build custom applications and enhance the capabilities of those applications.
Featured Programs
- UC Boulder Excel/VBA for Creative Problem Solving Specialization
- Linkedin Learning Macros and VBA for Beginners
- Linkedin Learning Dive Into VBA in Excel
Disclaimer: Some courses may include an affiliate link. Courses were chosen first based on the methodology with affiliate links only added after the ranking was complete.
The truth is, VBA can be daunting to learn, and everything you have heard about VBA probably points to this fact. However, there can be a lot of valuable applications for learning VBA, and it’s possible to do it on your own. Since VBA is a programming language, all you need to get started is your computer with Microsoft Office loaded up. Even though it might be very scary to start, learning VBA is definitely possible. Using our exclusive methodology, we’ve curated a list of the best free online courses for VBA. If you’ve ever been curious about learning VBA and crafting your own functional applications, keep reading to get started.
Ranking 10 Great Free Online Courses for VBA (Visual Basics for Applications)
1. Excel/VBA for Creative Problem Solving Specialization
Hosted by Coursera, offered by the University of Colorado Boulder
This best free VBA course is actually a specialization from Coursera, meaning that it consists of a selection of three courses designed to work together to enhance your learning. This specialization takes about four months to complete and works from a beginner experience level, meaning no knowledge of VBA is required to begin the course. Coursera is often named the best and most efficient MOOC (massive open online course) platform due to its effective courses and notable partnerships with elite universities and institutions. Coursera brings the learning materials to you, allowing you to just sit back and absorb as much of the material as you can.
This specialization is comprised of three moving parts: parts one and two are learning about how to solve creative problems with Excel using VBA, and part three is creating several VBA projects to showcase your skills. By the time you finish the course, you will have dramatically changed the way you use Excel spreadsheets and you will have unleashed the powers of VBA by learning all of the basics. At the end of this best free VBA specialization, you will receive a shareable certificate of completion for free to share alongside your resume or in professional networking.
Cost: Free
Certificate: Yes
Time to Complete: Approximately 4 months
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Partnered with UC Boulder, a preeminent research university
- Learn all of the basic elements of VBA
Cons:
- Longer course, requires a significant time commitment
2. Excel: Macros and VBA for Beginners
Hosted by LinkedIn Learning, offered by Oz du Soleil
Not only does this course from LinkedIn Learning teach you about VBA, but it also teaches you about macros, which are a simple way to create shortcuts for the tasks you do most often in Excel. While most people are already familiar with LinkedIn, one of the world’s leading professional networking sites, many are unfamiliar with its sister website LinkedIn Learning. LinkedIn Learning is a MOOC platform that requires users to pay a subscription fee every month to access their thousands of courses. Luckily for you, new users get one month of LinkedIn Learning completely for free, which is the perfect amount of time to complete this quick 40-minute course.
Instructor Oz du Soleil assumes you have no prior knowledge of macros or VBA, starting from the basics to give you a solid foundation to work from. Soleil explains some of the best situations to use macros in, especially when you repeat the same tasks a lot. He then explains how to use VBA to set up one of these macros, making your life easier and your work in Excel more efficient.
Cost: Free Sign up for a Free Trial
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 40 minutes
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Quick course, goes over the basics of VBA efficiently
- Learn how to make your life in Excel much easier with macros
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
3. Microsoft Excel VBA Fundamentals – Learn Basic Coding Skills
Hosted by Udemy, offered by Sihle Mhlanga
This top free online course from Udemy will teach you all of the basics you need to know to start programming with VBA. Udemy is a unique kind of MOOC platform because they allow instructors to upload and price their own courses as opposed to partnering with major institutions or universities. Because of this, there are thousands of courses on Udemy that vary in length, subject, and price. Both professional and creative courses can be found on the site, which is free to join, so you’ll never run out of amazing things to learn. This programming course takes only two hours to complete and has a 4.2 out of 5-star rating on the site.
The course covers important topics for learning VBA such as a general knowledge of event procedures, profound knowledge about the Initialize Event, a full understanding of Sub procedures, and an understanding of the master-slave approach. While you’re required to have some understanding of Microsoft Excel, Mhlanga starts from square one of programming with VBA so you can have a solid foundational understanding. If you’re an aspiring VBA programmer but don’t know where to start, this course is for you.
Cost: Free
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 2 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Goes from square one of VBA programming
- Teaches you how to write code on your own
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
4. Introduction to Excel VBA Programming
Hosted by Blackboard Learn
This course from Blackboard Learn is 100-percent free and self-paced, teaching you the fundamentals of Excel spreadsheets and programming using the VBA language. Blackboard Learn is an online educational platform developed by Blackboard, an American technology company designed to be used as a learning management system. Through their open education platform, they offer a variety of free, self-paced courses to students designed to enhance their learning outside of the classroom and broaden their horizons to new career opportunities. This course is sure to improve your chances of getting a job in the IT field, especially if you want to become a programmer.
This free VBA course requires anywhere from 5 to 15 hours of work a week depending on how long you want the course to take, and you will be able to write your own computer programs and get more out of Excel after taking it. Once you learn VBA with this course, you will also be able to learn other programming languages much faster in the future. While there is very little support offered from the instructors since the course is self-paced, most questions you have can be answered by viewing the discussion boards.
Cost: Free
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately one semester, 5-15 hours a week
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Offered by Cal Poly Ponoma, a preeminent polytechnical university
- Get more out of Excel and write your own programs
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
- Self-paced, no support from instructors
5. Microsoft Excel Essentials – VBA Programming
Hosted by Skillshare, offered by Alan Jarvis
Skillshare, similar to Udemy, is a web-based educational platform that allows instructors to create and upload their own course material to the site’s catalog. Rather than pricing it themselves, however, Skillshare is a subscription-based model that charges you a monthly fee if you are a premium member, giving you access to some of the site’s more exclusive and in-depth content. This course from Alan Jarvis happens to be one of those “premium” courses, so you would typically need to pay to access it. Luckily, however, a 14-day trial of Skillshare premium is offered to new users, and you’ll have plenty of time to complete some of this 15-hour course for free.
This course is relatively long, so it goes in-depth on some of the most important VBA programming-related topics such as the golden rules of coding, how to move code around, sheets versus worksheets, how to copy and paste, row and column properties, and message boxes. By the end of the course, you will basically be an Excel elite, programming your own solutions in less time and using less effort.
Cost: Free (With Skillshare premium free trial)
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 15 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Become an Excel elite programmer
- Design your own applications and do work in less time
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
6. Excel VBA For Complete Beginners
Hosted by Home and Learn
This beginner programming course assumes that you have no knowledge of programming in any language, starting from square one and offering a solid foundational understanding of coding. You should have some prior Excel skills so that you can take them to the next level, but this course is designed for complete beginners. Home and Learn is a site designed for aspiring programmers, coders, and computer scientists, as they’ve designed many different courses to suit your technology needs including Android Programming, PHP for Beginners, and Java for Beginners.
During this Excel VBA course, you will be asked to create your own macros, level up your Excel skills, and bring your programming knowledge to the next level. The course covers important programming topics like VBA programming variables, strings and string functions, programming loops, and user forms. By the end of the course, you will feel confident about creating your own programs in Excel or moving onto higher-level programming courses. You won’t get a lot of instructor feedback or assistance in this course since it is self-paced, but the course content has everything you need to get started.
Cost: Free
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: As long as needed
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Starts from a true beginner point, no prior knowledge needed
- Create your own macros and programs
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
- Self-paced, no instructor assistance
7. Excel VBA Beginner Tutorial
Hosted by YouTube, offered by Learnit Training
YouTube is always a great place to look for video tutorials because every single video on their site is free to watch, rewatch, and review at any given time. This two-hour crash course in Excel VBA was developed by Learnit Training, a corporate training company based in California. They instruct companies and employees on a variety of skills related to tech and Microsoft Office, and are more than qualified to teach you about Excel VBA. Learnit has a free online community as well as a Patreon that you can join to get more information, direct contact with instructors, as well as communication with other students.
This beginner tutorial goes over some of the fundamental and most important aspects of VBA, including things like the macro recorder, how to record simple macros, debugging macros, grammar in VBA, selection, color, and interface setup. Many YouTube commenters call the VBA tutorial one of the best they’ve seen, and also call the audio incredibly soothing and easy to listen to. If you’re looking for a course that’s a brief overview and doesn’t require a lot of interaction or time, this video might be perfect for you.
Cost: Free
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 2 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Offered by a professional corporate training company
- Learn about the VBA interface, macros, and more
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
- Only video content, no instructor assistance
8. Learning VBA In Excel
Hosted by LinkedIn Learning, offered by Curt Frye
As mentioned above, LinkedIn Learning is the sister website to LinkedIn, one of the world’s premier professional networking sites. LinkedIn Learning normally operates on a subscription model, but new users get one free month of learning from all the site’s content. One month is plenty of time to complete this short course from Curt Frye, which is just over three hours long. Curt Frye has written more than 40 books on IT and Microsoft Office, and is the president of Technology and Society, Incorporated. He has created more than 60 online courses for Lynda and LinkedIn Learning and is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable people you could learn from.
Frye argues that VBA isn’t actually as hard to learn as many people think, and he can show you the ropes when it comes to programming. Some of the learning objectives of his course include learning the steps needed to record a macro, explaining what a VBA watch does, learning how to delete a worksheet, and naming different Excel functions that you should know.
Cost: Free Sign up for a free trial
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 3 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Offered by someone who has written more than 40 books in the field
- Teaches you VBA in a way that’s digestible
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
9. Build Professional GUI apps with VBA Excel : Zero to mastery
Hosted by Udemy, offered by Mouad Tou
GUI apps, otherwise known as graphical user interface, allows users to interact with their technology using things like buttons, icons, and more. Building these applications can be challenging, but VBA makes it substantially easier. Udemy, as mentioned previously, is a MOOC platform that allows instructors to upload and price their own course material. For Mouad Tou, the instructor for this course, he has generously made his materials free and offers to take Udemy students from zero to mastery with VBA Excel.
This course only takes two hours to complete and when you finish it, you will feel confident about creating your own GUI apps with VBA, and you will have taken your overall Excel skills to the next level. You can create dynamic, reusable code after completing this course, and you will explore the opportunities of using VBA Excel to enhance everyday tasks.
Cost: Free
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 2 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Teaches you VBA from zero to mastery
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
- On-demand video material only
10. Hyper-disambiguated Excel VBA Programming
Hosted by Skillshare, offered by Grant Gamble
This VBA course, which was designed by Grant Gamble, is available to those with an active Skillshare Premium membership. As previously mentioned, Skillshare operates on a subscription model for those seeking a premium membership, but 14 days are available as a free trial for new users. Grant Gamble is a well-versed IT trainer, author, and developer with years in the field and several full-fledged online courses. This nearly six-hour course is designed for those who are new to VBA and programming in general, and it was created to show you how to automate Microsoft Excel tasks.
Gamble teaches coding in a way that emphasizes how important every single line of code you write is, which helps students to gain a better appreciation for the skill and fully understand what they are doing. This course will provide you with everything you need to get started in VBA, so you can start crafting your own programs.
Cost: Free (With Skillshare Premium free trial)
Certificate: No
Time to Complete: Approximately 6 hours
Curriculum: Beginner
User Experience: Excellent
Quality of Instruction: Excellent
Pros:
- Start anytime and go at your own pace
- Teaches you how to write your own individual programs
- Emphasizes the importance of every line of code
Cons:
- No certificate of achievement
Frequently Asked Questions About Free Online Courses for VBA
Since VBA has often been dubbed the most difficult programming language to learn in recent years, it might seem incredibly intimidating to jump into an online course for VBA not knowing where to start. However, many of the courses on this list are designed for complete beginners, and you don’t need to know anything about programming or VBA to begin them and succeed in them. Still, however, you might have some questions about online courses for VBA and what they will take, how hard they are, and what they will be like.
This is why we’ve designed the following section, which should outline and answer some of the most commonly asked questions about free online courses for VBA. Hopefully, this following section should ease some of your concerns surrounding taking one of these free online courses and help you feel more confident about taking on your dreams with ease.
Who Should Take A Free Online Course for VBA?
Obviously, there are people who are more suited to take an online course for VBA than others. If you’re already a programmer or you have some experience with other programming languages, it will make it a lot easier for you to learn VBA. Since programming languages are somewhat similar to one another, having some experience with any programming language will help you through these courses. Additionally, while you don’t need to be an Excel wizard, you definitely should have some general knowledge of Excel in order to be able to understand VBA and its applications.
What Will I Gain From An Online Course for VBA?
When you learn VBA, which is widely considered to be a difficult programming language and therefore a highly needed skill, you can get a variety of different jobs. VBA programmers can make in the upper six figures when it comes to salary, and programming jobs can be incredibly lucrative. As someone well-versed in VBA, you could work careers such as:
- Business analyst: Business analysts analyze organizations and businesses and evaluate their business model or their integration with technology. Business analysts aim to improve businesses, including advising them on things like products, services, and software by using big data and data analysis. Evaluating big data and relaying that information in a digestible way is where your programming skills will become valuable.
- Reporting analyst: Reporting analysts analyze the metrics of businesses and design reports to relay to other employees of that business. This job is very similar to a business analyst, except reporting analysts are more interested in recording and analyzing data in order to make decisions on their own, rather than decisions for the business.
- Programmer: Programmers write code and design mobile and digital applications. Often, programmers work with a business or institution to design their website or application and then they maintain, debug, and troubleshoot the systems or software they have designed in order to keep the business running smoothly. Using VBA would be one of your primary functions as a programmer, depending on the company you work for.
Are Free Online Courses for VBA Difficult?
Most people consider Excel VBA to be the most difficult programming language, and call it even more difficult than Java or Python. That being said, online courses for VBA are not particularly easy to complete. It’s incredibly useful to pursue a class that is interactive and taught by a live instructor when pursuing a class in VBA, because they will always be there to answer questions for you. Additionally, pursuing a class with an attentive instructor allows you to engage more deeply with the material and perhaps even do better on tests or quizzes. If you are committed to learning VBA, however, you certainly won’t find the material impossible to digest. Many instructors aim to make their course material suited for complete beginners, so VBA is certainly manageable to learn.
Are Free Online Courses for VBA (Visual Basics for Applications) Worth It?
Since VBA and Excel are online platforms, it only makes sense that you would want to take a course for VBA online. Since all of the courses on this list designed to teach you VBA are entirely free, you have nothing to lose by trying to complete them. Even if you find them too difficult to finish completely, you will certainly take away some kind of tangible knowledge. VBA is a great language for any aspiring programmer to learn, and taking a free course for VBA could be the first step to a lifelong career in IT and computer programming.
Disclaimer: Some courses may include an affiliate link. Courses were chosen first based on the methodology with affiliate links only added after the ranking was complete.
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