studying VBA

As I have extra time on my hand, my friend and I are going to study for VBA. I'm not in IB yet but from what I heard, mastering VBA is going to give me tons of advantage. For those of you studied, which studying method do you recommend?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

After working in IBD and knowing VBA, I'll tell you that it is not useful on the job, and it is certainly not going to get you INTO IBD. Nobody will even ask about that skill. You really think somebody will look at the section on your resume and say wow you know VBA? Can you write me a macro to make all my cells blue? HOly shit you're hired.

 
Best Response
Mr. White:
After working in IBD and knowing VBA, I'll tell you that it is not useful on the job, and it is certainly not going to get you INTO IBD. Nobody will even ask about that skill. You really think somebody will look at the section on your resume and say wow you know VBA? Can you write me a macro to make all my cells blue? HOly shit you're hired.

Please, do everyone a favour and refrain from posting mindless and dense comments. If you took a second to read his posts (mainly his second), no where did he mention that it will be his "hook". Now, if there were two candidates, ceteris paribus, they would definitely choose the candidate with VBA skills, because it DOES help, regardless of what you think.

 

Uhh...NO SHIT if two candidates were EXACTLY the same except the vba then it would help. When the fuck does that happen? Never.

If you are TIED for the position, then clearly you could have done better with your time preparing for the interview, not studying VBA.

So please do everyone a favour and refrain from posting mindless and dense comments.

GS06-08:
Mr. White:
After working in IBD and knowing VBA, I'll tell you that it is not useful on the job, and it is certainly not going to get you INTO IBD. Nobody will even ask about that skill. You really think somebody will look at the section on your resume and say wow you know VBA? Can you write me a macro to make all my cells blue? HOly shit you're hired.

Please, do everyone a favour and refrain from posting mindless and dense comments. If you took a second to read his posts (mainly his second), no where did he mention that it will be his "hook". Now, if there were two candidates, ceteris paribus, they would definitely choose the candidate with VBA skills, because it DOES help, regardless of what you think.

 

VBA isn't going to be tremendously advantageous to the firm, but to you. You'll save a solid 2 years of your life macroing through VBA over your career, for sure.

 

Yah I agree. Start with VBA for Dummies. I won't post it here but look around and there's torrents for the book online-should be super simple to find.

After that you can basically go online and start looking at more advanced and useful programming techniques to complement the basics you learned in the book.

 

VBA is best learned in a class atmosphere. The guidebooks are ok. I have the Excel Programming one (the blue one, I have the old 2007 edition, now it's on its 3rd edition). The VBA for Dummies book is good too, very different structure as far as how it goes about teaching, so they complement each other well.

If you're the only one that knows VBA in the office, expect to do something in VBA every time something is needed in VBA. That's how it was when I was back in PE. Not very fun if you don't love coding (I recognize VBA can be very useful, but it's not fun).

 

I agree with Alex. It's better to learn VBA in class. VBA programming can be very complicated with absolutely 0 programming background and people will just give up in mid way. You can certainly learn it on you own, but I'd say class assignments would push you harder to learn what's needed for the job. Some VBA assignments can easily burn you like 50 hours or so. But in a work environment, if you can do VBA programming, it adds a lot of values.

(Btw, I know VBA. I don't hate it but I don't love it either.)

 

I taught myself using the excel VBA help..of course..I had an idea of what I wanted to do and knew how to search. If you don't have a programming background, or an idea of how programming works, yes..class environment.

 
mikebrady:
I taught myself using the excel VBA help..of course..I had an idea of what I wanted to do and knew how to search. If you don't have a programming background, or an idea of how programming works, yes..class environment.

Just wondering what kind of class you are referring to? Like in a college class or some sort of weekend class?

haha at this point I doubt either is an option for me anyway but just wondering whats out there...

 

I'm sure there is an online course..Do you have any experience with coding? You can always buy a VBA book. Worst case scenario buy a VisualBasic book and download a free developer program from Microsoft. It's basically (no pun intended) the same thing.

 

They can be. Some people will just never understand programming and some will. Some need books some don't. One really cant say what you need. What's your skill level with regards to any type of programming? Can you at least read code?

If you can at least read code then all you have to do is do a yahoo search and look up what you want. For example, type in VBA code to calculate NPV. Then you can insert it into a module and tweak the code.

 

Agree with both dondraper85 and mikebrady.

Make sure you program something related to finance. That's huge. At an interview, interviewers might ask you what kind of VBA programs you did. If you could say something like "Oh, I used VBA to program an option pricing model." That will be impressive. =^) By the way, I doubt anyone one would ever ask you in details of how you program this and that at an interview unless the interviewer programs all day long. But at least, you have to know some basic stuff and say "Oh, I'm not sure how to do this, but I can easily use macro to record the codes and make modifications."

 

I've heard that VBA (i.e. Visual Basic for Applications such as excel) is used in structured finance, but I've never worked there so I can't say for certain.

Could you give more details on how you landed the job, what it is specifically, etc.?

I'm trying very hard to break into this field (coming from undergrad) and trying to figure out what the best way is.

 

I'm a senior in college who will be heading to a BB this summer, so I can't speak from banking experience. But this past summer I interned at a technical consulting firm where I picked up VBA. They used it to do a lot of process analysis, but I've found it to be useful in just about all my excel work.

It's not THAT hard to pick up, although I have had some programing in the past (I'm an Engineering and Economics double major). VBA can be especially helpful when you're working with very large spreadsheets. I wouldn't spend a TON of time trying to learn it, but if you have the opportunity it's a nice tool to have in your back pocket. It can save you hours of work filling in and analyzing spreadsheets in just about any job.

 

You could learn VB.net for free, there's an express edition that is free out there... (but this is only if you want to develop applications) http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/

VBA is used strictly for Microsoft Office. VBA is not compatible with VB.net, so it will soon be obsolete in the next version of Office. I wouldn't bother with it, you should learn Visual Studio Tools for Applications which will replace VBA. Here's a link... http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend/vsta/default.aspx

 

Wasting Time~

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that VBA will be obsolete in the next version of Office. You can download the new version of Office (Beta 2007) from microsoft's website and it still includes a VBA Editor. I've also done quite a bit of VBA programing in Excel 2007 so I can personally say that it is still included in the next version of Office.

While VSTO is being integrated with Excel and Word it is not necessarily replacing VBA. VSTO provides increased access to web services and increased security measures. VBA on the other hand provides more customization self-contained within the Office aplication. VSTO will also continue to be developed by Microsoft (Microsoft stopped developing VBA a while ago).

So while it is true that VSTO is being integrated with the new Office, VBA is also being included. I've included a few links below:

http://searchdomino.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid4_gci118… http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/update/2006/06jun/060…

 

VBA is like the old Visual Basic 6.0, people still use it but it's becoming old outdated software. I think VBA is also based off VB 6.0.

VSTO is like VB.net, it's where directions are heading into. So I would look into VSTO since that's where things are heading. Office 2007 might still have support for VBA but I'll bet the next version of Office after 2007 wont.

 

Thanks everyone. I'm going to work at one of the BB's after graduating from b-school this spring. I haven't been assigned to a specific group within the structured finance pool, but I'm aiming at either structured credit or structured bonds. I'm thinking about taking a class this spring that is co-offered with the financial engineering dept and requires VBA--basically a class on pricing derivatives using statistical models. As far as how I got the job, the usual: lots of informationals, trying to get good grades, working my ass off over the summer and a fair amount of luck.

 

take a class.

i'm serious. unless your the sort of guy who loves computers (which since you dont know VB, I sorta doubt), trying to learn it yourself using O'Reilly books is going to be like pulling teeth

 

Speaking of VB, I'm having trouble making this Excel macro, mainly cuz I'm pretty new to VBA. All I need it to do is delete any rows that are exactly identical between two different spreadsheets. Kudos to anyone who can figure it out

 

I did a lot of VBA coding in a past internship, and found that after learning the basics (I assume you are familiar with VBA - if not get a book + a CD with examples, best way to learn it), Google is your friend. I never found one central website that would answer all questions, but every technical problem I had would have been discussed several times in random forums.

Without further checking the code, this one seems to be helpful if you tweak it a bit: http://www.exceluser.com/explore/questions/vba_textcols.htm.

If you get started with the coding and get stuck shoot me a PM.

 

definitely, definitely the dummies book. It's very helpful, it didn't make me an expert but I for sure got a handle on it, and used it almost daily. Also, build up basic models, and then try to make them simpler by recording macros. Then read the code, to try to get an idea of what it means.

 

Visual Basic is certainly not important for banking. However, it can act as a little side benefit but for the most part, it doesn't save you much time.

If you have previous programming experience, Visual Basic will be very easy to learn. It obviously has very specific things about it (such as cell references and all of the excel capabilities), but it really isn't much different than Java or C++.

My advice for learning would be to use the "Record Macro" feature and do a few basic things (clicking on cells, moving up and down, formatting). Then go back and look at the code to see how things are written. Once you get the hang of it you can start writing your own code.

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