What are Arrays?

[ImranBhatti]

Hello

I have some general questions about Arrays:

What are Arrays in Excel VBA?
Are they substitutes of Loops? (What is difference between Arrays & Loops?)
Please suggest some useful online free resources to learn them.

Please share some examples where should use them.

By above questions it will be crystal clear to experts that I really don't know about Arrays.Sorry for that.But really wana know about it because it might be possible that I have been through different occasions where I might be using Arrays but as I don't know about the concept of the same and I had used there a long traditional coding as I am an accountant by profession and I love to automate all of my Excel work through VBA.

Best Regards
Imran Bhatti

[Richard Buttrey]

Hi,

No, arrays are not substitutes for loops.
An array is, in essence, a way of holding many items/variables within one name. Think of a VBA array as the equivalent of a range of cells in Excel. A Range of cells can be one dimensional, i.e. a single column, or a two dimensional is a range that covers two or more rows and two or more columns.


In fact it's often the case that an Excel Range is read into a VBA array since it's far quicker to do stuff with a VBA array than with the same details held in an Excel range.

A Loop is one way of iteratively processing each of the items in an array.

For more details just google stuff like Excel VBA arrays.

[CK76]

Array is data structure that contains a group of elements. And is used to store group of variables.
In VBA, array element (variable) can be accessed by using array name and index number.

Since index number is sequential, it's used in conjunction with loop to quickly iterate through variables.

To give an example. You can put range of values from sheet into array.

Table.JPG

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Above will create two-dimentional array, index starting from 1 (Base 1).

The array has 5 rows and 3 columns. In array, element in row 2, column 3 can be accessed like below.

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You can find detailed explanation in links below.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/vba/vba_arrays.htm
http://analystcave.com/vba-vba-array/

[ImranBhatti]

Sir would you mind to please give me an example to play with, in order to get the taste of using arrays? (if it complies with the forum rules)

[ImranBhatti]

I am gona try it right now.

[ImranBhatti]

It keeps on printing 80000 in the immediate windows.

[AB33]

If you do not know what a loop is you should go back to basic and learn Basic programming. You are trying to drive a car in third gear with out knowing how and why you need to use first gear.
Richard has given you the core concept of Arrays, but this site is not designed to be a college tutorial.

[ImranBhatti]

Thanks AB33

[ImranBhatti]

Thak you CK your mentioned links are helpfull.