Making an Excel sheet that fills webforms - new guy to VBA.

[psd926]

Hi everybody! I've spent quite a few hours reading over the forums and I read some posts about this topic but the problem is I am quite new to VBA and still don't have a good grasp of it. So I figured, let me describe what I hope to do and see if any of the community can offer advice or point me to a tutorial for beginners or something.


Okay, here it goes.

I am looking to make an excel sheet that has text boxes (or even use the cells) for me to input different info such as:

Address
City
State
Zip Code
Business Name

Then I would like to create a few different buttons, each button pertaining to a different website.

When pressed, these buttons would use the right info to fill in the slots (such as the USPS.com button would pull the address, city, and state info to fill in its form; and the superpages would use the City, State, Business Name, Zip Code info.)

First off, is this possible? Second, where can I learn to do it? Thanks again for the time!

[stanl]

First off, is this possible?


Yes, but IMHO probably more work than would be required if an alternative (Access/ADO Recordset) were used. In my experience, Excel was used as a 'backend' - viz. a report of each transaction, date/time and status. If I understand the task tou want to
1. Identify a name in a dataset
2. Associate that name with a recipient
3. Open a webform enter data and click 'Submit'
4. check status of submission.

While the dataset could be an Excel database, I would think you first concern should be an appropriate userform/dialog with recipients set as either a dropdown or [if small in number] radio buttons; a search mechanism for a name; buttons to Submit To Web / Cancel.

I'm sure someone here can point out a template you can adapt.

.02
Stan

[psd926]

Thanks for the advice, I'll certain look into access. My main concern is the VBA macro writing.. That is where I am completely lost. Would it be any different for excel than for access?

[stanl]

Thanks for the advice, I'll certain look into access. My main concern is the VBA macro writing.. That is where I am completely lost. Would it be any different for excel than for access?

It shouldn't matter, but I hope you don't think you can go in and 'record' a macro and it will write your program for you. On the database side you will be using VBA code for ADO (or DAO but I'd stick to ADO). For the WebForms you will use something like the Internet.Explorer Object hierarchy, or perhaps your forms will accept HTTP protocol. If you are new to this break it down. Start searching here/Google etc... for topics like "VBA fill web form" "VBA extract name from table"... Stan