7 Best VBA Certification Reviews in 2023 | Master Excel Macros, UDFs, and Dealing With External Data

If you're looking to get your Excel VBA certification, you should know how many doors that certification can open for you. However, you should also know that it's not an easy task. You'll need to master Excel macros, user-defined functions, and dealing with external data. Also, if you're interested in Business Intelligence, try one of our recommended BI courses.

So, because getting your certification is a lot more complex than one would expect, I decided to put all my knowledge into this article. Without further ado, keep on reading to find out everything there is about VBA certifications and courses!

3 Top Best Ways to Get an Excel VBA Certification

[Best Overall] 

1. Excel/VBA for Creative Problem Solving Specialization, Coursera

This three-part Coursera Specialization is the way to go for anyone who's looking to completely master and understand Microsoft Excel VBA from start to finish.

4.9/5 

  • Coursera is very well organized.
  • They are very “up to date” in topics of interest
  • Lots of high quality classes

[Best for the Money] 

2.Master Microsoft Excel Macros and Excel VBA, Udemy

This Udemy course is one of the best online courses for VBA beginners. It'll teach you everything you need to know about the automation of daily tasks with Excel formulas. 

4.8/5 

  • Training sessions progress is stored online
  • Creativity and enthusiasm of the instructors
  • Low cost of entry

[Best for the Self-paced Courses]

3. Microsoft Excel VBA Certification Training, Edureka

Edureka Excel VBA Certification Training is a good way to go if you want to become a Microsoft Excel expert and looking to get a career in that field because this is a very advanced course.

4.7/5 

  • Live online courses, interactive classes with individual attention
  • Industry-recognized certification
  • Exclusive Learning manager

List of the Best Excel VBA Course Certifications:

Here's the short answer you're looking for: a list of the best courses that offer a VBA certification of completion at the end.

    The TOP 7 Best Ways to Get an Excel VBA Certification in 2021

    Whether you're looking for just VBA certification training or a full course that covers everything from Visual Basic programming to using Microsoft Office Excel for beginners, you'll find what you're seeking throughout this section.

This three-part Coursera Specialization is the way to go for anyone who's looking to completely master and understand Microsoft Excel VBA from start to finish. So, let's break down each of the three parts to give you a better perspective of what you'll learn.

In the first part, you'll learn to automate your tasks using Excel macros and make your own user-defined functions, which is a good place to start.

And the best thing about this course is that you don't need to have any experience or past knowledge to get started!

In case you don't know, MS Excel macros are like a set of tasks or actions that can be done using a single click.

Moving on to the second part of this specialization, that's where you'll learn to import external data from other sheets or text files into your own Excel workbook. Then, you'll connect that to what you learned in the first part in the sense that you'll learn to automate the importation and modification of data.

During the first two parts, you'll work on multiple projects that vary in difficulty. You'll solve some quizzes and questions that can really help reinforce the new information into your memory.

While in the third and final part, you'll work on large projects that will test everything you've learned over the previous two parts.

Like I said, this three-part specialization is the best there is for beginners.

Duration:

In total, the three-part online course is 44 hours, and it's divided as follows:

Part 1 is 18 hours, part 2 is 20 hours, and part 3 is 16 hours.

Pros

  • Coursera is very well organized.
  • They are very “up to date” in topics of interest
  • Lots of high quality classes

Cons

  • I have not found anything that needs to be improved

4.8/5 

This Udemy course is one of the best online courses for VBA beginners. It'll teach you everything you need to know about the automation of daily tasks with Excel formulas. Additionally, you'll learn how to use Excel macros efficiently.

After you've mastered macros, you'll dive deeper into Excel VBA for creating a dynamic environment that can be reused for multiple projects and applications. Once you've developed your VBA macros skills, you'll be able to decide the best approach for the most efficient code.

In this course, you'll learn to import and data from different MS Excel sheets and even access external text files into your own worksheets. 

You can later automate some calculations to be performed on that data to use them in a report.

However, this course targets students who are already familiar with Excel and its basic formulas, macro, so keep that in mind.

Price-wise, this is one of the most affordable MS Excel VBA courses that you can find. Also, it's a self-paced course, so you have full control of the time you spend learning.

Duration:

This course consists of 5 hours of videos.

Pros

  • Training sessions progress is stored online
  • Creativity and enthusiasm of the instructors
  • Low cost of entry

Cons

  • Time-commitment required to get through some of the courses

3. [Best for the Self-paced Courses]  Microsoft Excel VBA Certification Training, Edureka

4.7/5 

Edureka Excel VBA Certification Training is a good way to go if you want to become a Microsoft Excel expert and looking to get a career in that field because this is a very advanced course.

It's divided into a few modules, so let's break things down a little. The first module will introduce you to VBA and event handling. After that, the second module will teach you everything you need to know about loops in VBA and data handling.

Then, you'll further improve your data manipulation skills, and you'll make charts that can be really helpful for reports during the third module. 

In the fourth module, you'll start dealing with external data where you'll import and export different data files into and from your workbook.

In the fifth and final module, you'll start working on projects to fully implement everything you've learned into real-life situations.

I have to mention, this course comes at a hefty price tag, but it's well worth the money.

Duration:

This online course training consists of 5 modules with various time lengths. However, it's self-paced, so you can finish it as slow or as quick as you'd want.

Pros

  • Live online courses, interactive classes with individual attention
  • Industry-recognized certification
  • Exclusive Learning manager

Cons

  • High Course pricing

On Linkedin, you can find various MS Excel VBA online courses from which you're guaranteed to find the perfect one that matches your skills and goals.

LinkedIn logo

You can find some other related courses that are very specific, like ones that only teach you Excel macros, so you can focus your learning on what you need to know exactly.

Also, you'll find courses that will teach you Visual Basic from the very beginning and teach you how to get started with Excel VBA and macros to automate some tasks.

Besides, Linkedin is a very respectable place to get a certification from; you're almost guaranteed a decent career where you can automatically analyze, import, export, and modify data.

Duration:

The duration depends on your course of choice, but generally, the videos are quite short and easy to digest.

Pros

  • It does an excellent job in relating to their audience and transferring and relating information they give in each course
  • It always has a variety of new and relevant courses to improve your career skill set
  • Cheap price model

Cons

  • Sometimes there are too many courses! Some AI intelligence to help sort courses.

Who said you need to have programming experience to learn Visual Basic? You can get started with this course from GoSkills that'll teach you everything you need to know about MS Excel, VBA, and macros training, even if you're a beginner. Also, you'll get a certification at the end.

I know macros can be a little confusing at first, and this course is here to fix that. It'll guide you through every step of the way until you're an expert in VBA, macros, logic tests, loops, and more! You'll even learn to create and use user-defined functions.

Additionally, you'll get familiarized with different kinds of errors you might run into during real-life projects, and you'll learn how to handle and fix them.

Duration:

The course consists of 41 lessons and that require 20.5 hours to complete, especially when counting the time spent on projects too.

Pros

  • Easily manageable bite-sized lessons
  • There are practice problems at the end of each section
  • The instructor provides some personal feedback on his experiences well which is nice

Cons

  • There could be some additional practice questions and the final exam could incorporate some new questions rather than just repeating the end of lesson quiz questions

This course is perfect for all designers out there because it'll teach you how to import data from AutoCAD into your Excel workbook. If that seems like something you're interested in, let me tell you more about this course.

In this course, you'll learn how to export data from AutoCAD into your Excel workbooks, which you can later use to import that data into other formats, as well.

The logic behind the exportation might be a little difficult, but this course will explain everything thoroughly.

Even if you're not familiar with Excel and VBA, this course is still a good fit for you as it requires no prerequisite or prior knowledge of programming or Visual Basic!

Duration:

The course is divided into seven sections with a total of 26 lectures and 2.5 hours of content.

Pros

  • It'll teach you how to import data from AutoCAD into your Excel workbook
  • This course will explain everything thoroughly
  • It requires no prerequisite or prior knowledge of programming

Cons

  • Didn't find any

In this PluralSight course, you'll learn everything about VBA, which can make your experience using Excel so much more convenient.

You'll learn to send search queries to databases and create user applications within Excel using VBA, which would be incredibly helpful if you work with a lot of data and need to analyze and modify it quickly and efficiently. Also, you'll learn how to build a good user interface that's easy to use.

Of course, you'll also learn how to use Excel macros to automate some actions and to export your data into PDF files.

Duration:

The course offers about 2.5 hours of content.

Pros

  • Up-to-date content
  • Offline and mobile downloads
  • Translated to almost all languages

Cons

  • Some videos are a bit lengthy

How Long Will It Take to Learn Microsoft Excel VBA?

There's no clear one-fits-all answer to how long it's going to take to learn VBA; that heavily depends on how familiar you are with Microsoft Excel VBA and if you've tried to code with Visual Basic before. Also, having any background in programming could really help you get the hang of using VBA quickly. Either way, Visual Basic isn't a difficult programming language, even for a beginner.

Additionally, the duration depends heavily on how long your Excel VBA course of choice is. You can find online courses as short as 2 hours and ones as long as 60 hours — it depends on what you're looking to learn exactly.

excel charts

Do you just want to learn the basics of MS Excel VBA for casual use? Or do you want to completely master VBA and work on more advanced projects? These are all factors that affect the amount of time you spend on learning Microsoft Excel VBA.

Also, if you're completely detecting your time to learn VBA and you're a fast learner, you might become a VBA expert within a few days. On the other hand, if you're working full-time and learning Excel VBA just in your free time (like 30 minutes a day or less), it might take a little longer.

What Is the Best Way to Learn Excel VBA?

There are many different ways to approach your MS Excel VBA learning journey. However, going for an online VBA course or certification training might be the most accessible path for most people because online courses allow you to learn at your own pace while still assigning you with projects and maybe quizzes to get you more comfortable with using Excel formulas and VBA code.

Also, most (if not all) online courses will reward you with a certification of completion when you finish the Excel VBA course, and there might be a small exam at the end that you need to pass. However, the best way to learn Microsoft Office Excel VBA is to try it for yourself.

learn to program

Learning through listening or watching videos might be enough to get you started using MS Excel VBA and formulas. Still, it's nowhere near creating actual projects where you'll have to code, and you'll run into some complications that you would need to work out.

Real-life projects are how you master VBA, expand your knowledge, and develop your skills; trial and error is the best training. Also, when you have a career that requires working with Excel VBA regularly, it's good practice to work on your own personal projects where you can really put your skills to the test!

Final Words

Now that you're at this point in the article, you should have a clear idea of how to get your VBA certification. Also, you should know which courses you might need to take to further develop your skills to get to an advanced level of Excel VBA programming easily.