Short Course Description

Getting Started With Excel and VBA in the Laboratory

Excel Course Description
Excel is widely used in scientific laboratories to automate tedious data manipulation and presentation tasks. This course will review many of the tools built-in to Excel for handling problems commonly encountered in the laboratory. It will also introduce the Visual Basic for Applications scripting language as a way to customize Excel and expand upon its functionality.

Who Should Attend
This short course is for bench scientists, laboratory managers, and students interested in automating basic laboratory tasks using Microsoft Excel and its scripting language, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The course material is targeted at beginners having no prior experience with VBA. A practical knowledge of the use of Excel is required and familiarity with a procedural programming language such as C, Java or BASIC is advantageous.

How You'll Benefit From This Course

  • You will learn techniques for loading data into Excel from text files of different formats
  • You will learn how to write and edit Macros to process data
  • You will learn the fundamentals of the VBA language
  • You will be introduced to the interaction between VBA and common Excel objects such as Workbooks, Worksheets, and Cells
  • You will learn ways to display data in custom graphic forma

Course Topics

  • Importing data into Excel
  • Reading and writing files with VBA
  • Writing Excel Macros
  • Creating Excel Add-Ins
  • Programmatically manipulating worksheet data
  • Programmatically formatting worksheets
  • An introduction to objects and the Excel object model

Course Fee:
US $1080/$1180*		 Course Format:
Computer		 Class Limit:
40

Instructors:

William Neil William Neil

Princeton, New Jersey
USA

William Neil received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and Biology from Trenton State College in 1981. For several years he worked with the Toxicology Division of Mobil Oil Corporation where he developed his interest in computer programming and laboratory automation. In 1987 he wrote his first application to automate data collection from a liquid scintillation counter and installed his first robotics system to automate a Packard biological oxidizer. He then took a two-year sabbatical to focus entirely on laboratory automation at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), where he automated fragrance sample compounding. It was at IFF where he learned how to ensure a 24/7 operation. William has been employed in the pharmaceutical industry since 1992, where he has written several applications in Visual Basic and VBA to automate the Drug Discovery process, particularly in the area of instrument integration.


Edward Kuspiel Edward Kuspiel

Princeton, New Jersey
USA

Edward Kuspiel received a B.A. and B.S. in Engineering from The College of New Jersey in 1981. Working as a Senior Engineer for Wallace and Tiernan, Ed designed electronics and control software used in new products for chemical process instrumentation. Since 1986, Ed has been with Bristol-Myers, Squibb where he is a Group Leader in Discovery Informatics and Automation. During his tenure at BMS, Ed has developed multiple novel robotics systems, laboratory instruments, and specialized controls used in pharmaceutical research. He currently serves as chairman for the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Laboratory Interest Robotics Group.

* higher fee applies to those who are not ALA members