Using Visual Basic macros with the Better Excel Exporter appĪs written above, Better Excel Exporter does not do any sort of processing on the macros, simply copies them from the template spreadsheet to result spreadsheet.

Office VBA language reference - official samples and references for VBA, by Microsoft.Create or delete a macro - official (quick) article on recording, creating or deleting macros, by Microsoft.Excel Easy VBA tutorial - thorough tutorials for the most common macro development problems.Here is a collection of resources that we found useful: There are many great tutorials about Excel visual basic macros in the web. When you need to access Jira internals for data to be exported.Įx: running additional JQL queries in Jira, as additional sources of data for the final report.

When you need to pre-process the data before that is put to the spreadsheet.Įx: if you want to calculate the average age for open issues, but don't want to dump each issue to Excel to do the calculation there, then do that in Groovy. When you need to add user interactions to the spreadsheet.Įx: running some logic when the user clicks a button in Excel, or displaying an alert box when the spreadsheet is opened. Or you work with date and time values, you want your spreadsheet depend on the current time. When you need to actualize the exported data every time when the spreadsheet is opened.įor example, you want to fetch the most recent currency exchange rates from an external web-service, and update sales data with this. In some use cases, you can simply choose the technology you're more familiar with, but here is some general guidance. To implement business logic that modify the spreadsheet during the export, use Groovy scripts. Generally speaking, macros are useful when you want to dynamically format, update, automate or post-process an Excel spreadsheet's content after it was exported from Better Excel Exporter. How does this feature relate to Groovy scripting, the other way of adding custom beaviour to Excel exports? VBA macros are written in the Visual Basic programming language, and are executed by VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which is built-in to Excel.īetter Excel Exporter for Jira supports VBA macros in the Excel templates, simply by copying the macros from the template to the final output file without modifications. VBA macros are 'little programs' to enhance Excel spreadsheets with dynamic behavior.

How to download visual basic for excel