In today’s example, we’ll introduce data entry with the help of the UserForm. Using UserForm can considerably improve the interaction with our users. Furthermore, this way, we can assist them in executing particular steps.
They play a very important role in the automatization of Excel. None of the business dashboards can be imagined without Form Controls.
Let’s say a few words about today’s task. At times data entry can be very boring, and this can incline users to mistakes. We’ll design a form that, based on three data (Name, Age, Job title), will upload a “database”.
Exactly as you can see in the picture below!
Three label, three text fields. And another thing, the Command Button. We’ll assign to this a simple macro that will store input data.
How to create a UserForm to aid data entry?
Let’s start! The first step is to enter the Visual Basic Editor form the ribbon or by pressing the Alt+F11 buttons.
Open the VBA Editor. If the Project Explorer is not visible, click View, Project Explorer. Click Insert, and select the Userform.
After this, place the fields and their names onto this form.
Now insert the names of the fields by clicking on the Label Control button:
As next step follow the TexBox belonging to the names. This option enables data insertion.
Change any elements and attributes of our form by right-clicking on them and then choosing the Properties window.
As the next step, we have the option, for example, to set the fonts, size, and colors.
We can be all creative regarding the designs. We can make any kind we’d like or what we need for a given task.
Now we will place another button on this form. The purpose of this is to fix the given data on one Excel table.
We do this by inserting the CommandButton from the Controls:
Let’s see what the data entry form looks like now:
The user interface is ready! Data input will be a lot easier from now on. But we still have one very important thing to do.
Because for the next step, we have to determine the code behind it.
In this example, this would run by clicking on the “Add to list” button.
Let’s right-click the CommandButton.
From the drop-down menu, choose the View Code command. In the next chapter, we’ll show how to assign a short VBA code to this.
Adding Logic to Button in a Form
Let’s clarify what do we expect from the code after clicking on the button.
We will expect that it inserts the values of the UserForm into the determined cells of the determined rows.
For this, we have to know where the next empty line in the table is.
After the insertion, we have to equal the appropriate cells to the input values of the appropriate fields.
To begin, let’s define two variables.
The first one with Integer type by the name rw to determine the current, still empty rows.
The second one by the name ws and with type Worksheet.
This will determine which worksheet our form will refresh/update the cells.
We can already set the calues of the latter variable onto Sheet1.
Use the Range Find method to determine the starting value of our rw variable.
In our case we have to use the ws.Cells.Find method, because we are looking amongst the cells of Sheet1 that contain anything (What:=”*”).
We search by rows (SearchOrder:=xlRows) for the row containing the last (SearchDirection:=xlPrevious) value (LookIn:=xlValues).
Then we add one to this number to find the first empty row:
rw = ws.Cells.Find(What:=”*”, SearchOrder:=xlRows, SearchDirection:=xlPrevious, LookIn:=xlValues).Row + 1
And from this point on our task is basically easy.
The written value in the field must be equal to the rw variable. We store the number of the cells in the rw variable.
We can find out the names of our fields from the UserForm Properties window in case we did not use standard names for them.
Therefore, ws.Cells(rw, 1).Value (this is the cell of Sheet1 first empty row in the first column) be equal to Me.TextBox1.Value which is the value, was given into our first field.
Me always refers to the parent object that we “have” our code.
In this case, it refers to UserForm, but if we were to write our code on a Sheet, that it would refer to that.
Create User-Feedback MessageBox
Here might be subservient to inform the user what happened to the input data, so with the help of the MsgBox command, we can write a message out for him.
At this time on the popup message window, there should be only one OK button (vbOKOnly parameter) but of course, with the help of the other parameters of the MsgBox, we can tune this to our liking.
MsgBox “Stored!”, vbOKOnly
If it is done, we can delete the input values from our fields. We can do this because they are already in the appropriate cells.
The solution is easy:
We make the value of the Me.TextBox1.Value equal to nothing.
After this is useful to bring the cursor back to the first field with the help of the SetFocus parameter.
Error handling – How can we do this?
Basically we have to endeavor to write the codes with minimal possible errors.
For this, it is useful to insert an “If” branching so that in case of empty cells, the UserForm will do nothing. We only aim to store the data if all the cells/fields are filled out! The following shortcode will alert the user of insufficient data.
Simply turn our thoughts to the code, namely
1. Put (If) after the removal of spaces (Trim)
2. Values of the first fields (Me.TextBox1.Value)
3. Equal to nothing (= “”)
4. then (Then)
5. write a massage (MsgBox “Please fill the field!”),
6. then exit (Exit Sub)
7. and with this we can close the “If” branching (End If).
The VBA code:
What else is there left to do? To determine how to start the UserForm.
Here we can set events or key combinations also.
In our example, we choose the simplest solution. We assign the startup of the code to a CommandButton.
Under the Ribbon Developer tab the Controls section can be found.
Let’s insert a button with the help of the Insert command:
By double clicking on the button in Desingn Mode we get over to the Visusal Basic Editor.
We only need to show the UserForm named by us DataEntryForm command for the “Click” event.
Here is the code snippet:
And we are done!
After clicking on the button the UserForm opens. After filling this out the data gets into the appropriate cells.
Conclusion:
Our today’s data input showcase example was a very simplified task. But it was perfect or us to demonstrate: It is worth using Excel for serious tasks, and the VBA helped us to create an interactive form for the Excel dashboard.
We hope you got into the mode for VBA programming. We recommend that everyone start building their own little project! Download the VBA example!
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