When doing a project for a company, this can often come with various drawbacks. With this, we refer to all the times that it is necessary to be able to keep an account of a particular figure, the calculation of working hours, the accounting record of some series of things, rent calculations or having specific figures of some type of data.
Be that as it may, it is usual that many figures are being kept at the same time. This can be a bit cumbersome if you don’t know how to do it correctly. But, this is what spreadsheets are for.
In order to keep a firm accounting of various figures in a work project, Excel is often used. This is a program that comes in the form of a spreadsheet that has really proven to be very useful; to the point of being an indispensable tool in the day-to-day life of many company workers today to solve mathematical operations.
Actually, all you need is a basic understanding of some of its functions, and once you have it, there is not much that can stop you from using it.
However, there are always new tricks that can be learned within this incredible program. Probably one of the most important and useful are UDFs. These are user-defined functions, and if you have enough knowledge they can be extremely useful.
But what happens when I put in a cell a UDF function that I don’t have much knowledge about? If this is something that happens to you often or you need to know what works for which, you can see the next step by step that we have put together for you.
What you need to know about a UDF
In a program where much of its operation is based on specific formulas and functions, it is always extremely useful to have a language broad enough to know how to create new functions and formulas that we can use widely whenever we need it.
This is where UDFs come in. As the English name implies, UDFs are user-defined functions. Through macros that are handled in Visual Basic for Applications, it is possible to create, modify and even join other existing functions, which can be very useful if you need to perform a particular function that does not exist for specific tasks.
In order to create a new UDF, you must enter into Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which you can access through ALT + F11 within Excel. Here you must enter an appropriate macro in the command module.
You will need to know a specific language in order to enter your new UDF, so take your time reading about it. Once you have entered it you will be able to see your new UDF among the default Excel functions.
Identifying your UDF
Once you have your UDF ready, it’s always good to be able to identify it. Although it will always be named at the time of its creation, it is always much better to give it a description. This happens when you create a UDF, and after a while, you have forgotten its specific function.
Although you can see the name at the top of your Excel sheet, it is good that you have everything clear. You can do this the moment you create it.
When you open VBA, you must press F2, here the drop-down option of “global” will open within “members”. Find your UDF and right-click it to be able to select the properties.
Here you will see a small box that you can fill in to give a good description of your UDF. Thus, you will be able to identify which UDF you are using in your spreadsheet and be clear about what you are doing.