Data Entry using UserForm and VBA

By excel365 - July 27, 2017

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 to
execute particular steps.

They play a very important role in the automatization of Excel. In these days 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 by 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 on the picture below:

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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 rst 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.

Accept

After this place the elds and their names onto this form.

Now insert the names of the elds by clicking on the Label Control button:

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As next step follow the TexBox belonging to the names. This option enables the data insertion.

Change any elements and attributes of our form by right-clicking on them and then choose the
Properties window.

As next step we have the option for example to set the fonts, size and colors.

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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 x the given data on one
Excel table.

We do this by inserting the CommandButton from the Controls:

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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.

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Adding Logic to Button in a Form
Let’s clear what do we expect from the code after clicking on the button?

Our expectation will be 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
elds.

To begin let’s de ne two variables.

The rst 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 contains anything (What:=”*”).

We search by rows (SearchOrder:=xlRows) for the row containing the last

(SearchDirection:=xlPrevious) value (LookIn:=xlValues).

Than we add one to this number to nd the rst empty row:

rw = ws.Cells.Find(What:=”*”, SearchOrder:=xlRows, SearchDirection:=xlPrevious,

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And from this point on our task is basically easy.

The written value in the eld must be equal with the rw variable. We store the number of the cells
in the rw variable.

We can nd out the names of our elds 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 rst empty row in the rst column) be
equal to Me.TextBox1.Value which is the value was given into our rst eld.

Me always refers to the parent object that we “have” our code.

In this case it refers to UserForm, but if we was 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 massage out for him.

At this time on the popup massage 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 elds. 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 back the cursor to the rst eld with the help of the SetFocus parameter.

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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 in case of empty cells the UserForm will do nothing.
Our goal is to only store the data if all the cells / elds are lled out! The following short code will
alert the user for insu cient data.

Simply turn our thoughts to the code, namely

1. Put (If) after the removal of spaces (Trim)

2. Values of the rst elds (Me.TextBox1.Value)
3. Equal to nothing (= “”)
4. then (Then)
5. write a massage (MsgBox “Please ll the eld!”),
6. then exit (Exit Sub)
7. and with this we can close the “If” branching (End If).

The VBA code:

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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:

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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 lling this out the data gets into the
appropriate cells.

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