Rapid Application Development / Advanced Excel Development

VBA Best Practice

There is a lot of information floating around about how to get various things done in VBA, how to make the best use, or sometimes just the most use of VBA and Excel.
This section aims to add an element of Quality and Best Practices. These are just general guidelines, a professional developer will always assess the options and make the appropriate choice in their specific situation.
These suggestions are specific to Excel VBA in commercial settings, many will not translate to other technologies or other settings.

VBA Best Practice Series

High Quality Code - General 2

• Recognise when you move from procedure based design to module/object based (eg procs need to return >1 value, lots of parameters get passed all around)
• Object Oriented designs can be useful, but can cost performance
• The biggest factor on performance is design
• Be aware of Excel/VBA limitations, and clear on its strengths
• Use 'TODO' and maybe 'Enhancement' comments (don't release until TODOs cleared - (use edit find in project)
• Use shift+F2 for definitions, F8, Shift+F8 and Ctrl+Shift+F8 (step out) and stop
• Note compiler is weak compared to C++ (eg:won't catch assigning a string to a variable of type double)
• Use code cleaner regularly
• Differentiate style from quality
• Use the most restrictive scope that works for variables and routines