This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.
- What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel
- Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
- Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros
- Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel
- My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros
In part 3 of our VBA Crash Course, we are going to learn how to speak with various Excel objects like Cells, Ranges etc. and deal with them.
Objects – what are they?
Any thing and everything is an object. Your dog, your bed, your neighbors cat, their car, your bike, your computer, the shiny new Excel workbook you just created, my website, your email account – every thing is an object. For that matter, Lady Gaga’s meat dress is an object too. But that is a whole different subject.
From our “We are nuts” example yesterday, you can already see these objects:
- One awesome owner (that is you)
- 24 store manager objects
- 24 store objects
Some sample objects you can find in Excel workbooks
- Cells, lots of them
- Ranges of cells
- Worksheets
- Charts
- Pivot Tables
- The entire workbook
Objects & Excel VBA
Since your Excel workbook is nothing but a collection of objects, whenever you want to make any change (like modify a cell’s value or recolor a chart), you need to refer to the corresponding object and do the necessary thing.
But how do we talk to these objects from VBA. Well, to know that, you must understand how an Object looks to our eyes vis-a-vis computer’s eyes. Here is an illustration to help you understand the difference.
As you can guess, Objects have Properties. In the case above, color RED is a property of the cell object.
Objects – What are they made of?
In VBA world, objects are made of 2 things – properties & methods.
The color of a cell is a property.
You use copy method to copy cell’s value to Excel’s clipboard.
In other words, properties are what an object has. Methods are operations you do on the object.
Note: Certain objects also have a special class of methods called as Events. An Event is a special type of method that runs only when a circumstance is met. For example, select a cell, Excel internally runs SelectionChange Event on the current worksheet.
How do we access these properties & methods?
In plain English, if you want to know the color of a cell, you would ask “What is the color of cell A4?”
In Excel VBA language, the same becomes Range(“A4”).Interior.Color
Notice how the dot (.) is used like of in our plain English version.
Dot (.) is your best friend when dealing with objects. Since many Excel objects have dozens of properties and methods associated with them, to help us understand and use right properties, VBE (Visual Basic Editor) shows all the properties and methods whenever you press . after typing an object, like this:
Most commonly used Objects in VBA:
While there are no single set of objects that are used by everyone for every need, there are a few VBA objects that are used in many situations. In this section, we will examine these objects.
Range Object:
Range object is used to refer to a range of cells. For example Range(“A1:A10”) refers to the cells A1:A10 in the current worksheet. Range has a lot of useful methods and properties. One of the commonly used property is is Range(“A1:A10”).cells which refers to all the cells in the range.
Tips on using range object:
- You can use named ranges in Range object like this: Range(“myStoreList”)
- You can use square brackets [] to refer to ranges like this: [A10] refers to Range(“A10”)
- You can use variables in Range Object like this: Range(mylist) refers to whatever address is stored in mylist variable.
- You can use variables along with static text, like this: Range(“A1:A” & endPoint) refers to the range A1:A120, assuming endPoint variable is 120.
ActiveCell Object:
Active cell object refers to the currently selected cell. If you have selected a range of cells, usually ActiveCell refers to the top-left cell.
Tips on using ActiveCell Object:
- Use ActiveCell.End(xlDown).Activate to select the last cell in the same row with a value (assumes you have no breaks in between). You can also use options like xlToLeft, xlToRight, xlUp too.
Selection Object:
Selection object refers to the currently selected cells or anything else that is selected (like a chart or drawing shape).
How to learn about various Excel Objects and use them:
Excel has a lot of objects. Some times objects contain other objects. For example a Range contains some Cells. A Selection may contain some Charts. Understanding the hierarchy and properties of all these objects is a tough task. But thankfully, there is help.
Here are my top tips to learn about various Excel Objects:
- Use Macro Recorder: Whenever you need to use an object that you are not familiar with, just use built-in macro recorder and do some operations on that object. Now stop it and view the code. You would have a good idea how to deal with that object. For ex. if you want to learn how to use VBA to refresh a pivot table, just start recorder, select the pivot, refresh it and stop the recorder. Now go and see the code and you will have a good idea how to refresh pivot tables from VBA.
- Use VBA Help: Excel VBA has a very good help system. Just go to Visual Basic Editor (ALT+F11) and press F1 to start the help. Type the object name you want help on and read thru the pages to learn. VBE also has a helpful screen called “Object Browser” to visually browse various Excel objects and understand the methods & properties.
- Learn from Code Examples: There are several sites, including Chandoo.org that publish frequent articles, code samples and tips on Excel & VBA. Follow a handful of these sites and learn from the shared examples.
- Take up some project: In your day to day work, you always see some problems that can be solved with VBA. So go ahead and take up one such task and try to do it using VBA. This is a great way to learn a new language like VBA.
- Join a Training Program: Last but not least, joining a training program is a good way to learn VBA. If you want a good program on VBA, consider joining our upcoming batch of VBA Classes.
Putting it all together – a Daily Sales Tracker for “We Are Nuts”:
So far you have learned What is Excel VBA, How to use variables, conditions & loops and How to use various Excel Objects.
In the next part, learn how to create a VBA Application combining all the things you learned so far.
What are your tips for learning about Excel Objects & Using Them?
Excel Object Model is vast and deep. There are a lot of things that we can learn (and remember), but there are a lot more that we will never know or memorize until we need to use them. I always rely on built-in macro recorder to learn about the objects and then modify the code until it works just right.
What about you? How do you learn about Excel Objects? Please share your tips & ideas using comments.
Join Our VBA Classes
We run an online VBA (Macros) Class to make you awesome. This class offers 20+ hours of video content on all aspects of VBA – right from basics to advanced stuff. You can watch the lessons anytime and learn at your own pace. Each lesson offers a download workbook with sample code. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.
25 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”
Hi Chandoo,
your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?
Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!
Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?
Thanks in advance,
Stelios
In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.
@Masthan
You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations
Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.
Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
Thanks in advance, Chuck
Hi Chandoo,
Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?
Thx
@Idan
.
No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
Only Joking,
.
But there is no VBA or code,
It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.
How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.
@Anand
Open the workbooks you want to link to
Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula
The format for using workbooks is
=[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
or
=SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
etc
Hi Chandoo,
I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.
Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.
What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?
Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.
I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?
Positively awesome!
I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help". Here is the scenario:
20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)
class
instructor
room
students
start
#days
PATH
karen
201
21
01/01/13
11
BILLING
jane
401
15
01/12/13
13
MEDISOFT
mike
301
11
01/25/13
9
he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart. He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
Jan 🙂
Dear chandoo,
Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.
I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?
I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.
Hi chandoo,
Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?
Thanks,
Savitha
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,
Thanks,
Murali
nice post
How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.
solution 1:
mydata=B2:C16
stoplist=E2:E8
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16, F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*F))
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16,RH,N(B2:B16=B2), F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),TOT,SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*RH*F),SUM(SMR*RH)-SUM(SMR* RH*F))
ALTERNATE SOLUTION
=SUM(C2:C16)-SUM(FILTER(C2:C16,ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))))
=SUM((B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16))-SUM((ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))*(B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16)))
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Table1"]}[Content],
#"Replaced Value" = Table.ReplaceValue(Source,null,";",Replacer.ReplaceValue,{"Column1"}),
#"Transposed Table" = Table.Transpose(#"Replaced Value"),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Transposed Table",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"}),
#"Merged Columns" = Table.CombineColumns(#"Removed Other Columns",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"},Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.None),"Merged"),
#"Split Column by Delimiter" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Merged Columns", {{"Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter(";", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Merged"),
#"Added Prefix" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter", {{"Merged", each "|" & _, type text}}),
#"Replaced Value1" = Table.ReplaceValue(#"Added Prefix","||","|",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Merged"}),
#"Split Column by Delimiter1" = Table.SplitColumn(#"Replaced Value1", "Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.Csv), {"Merged.1", "Merged.2", "Merged.3", "Merged.4", "Merged.5", "Merged.6", "Merged.7", "Merged.8"}),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter1",{"Merged.1"}),
#"Removed Duplicates" = Table.Distinct(#"Removed Columns")
in
#"Removed Duplicates"