How to Automatically Run Excel Spreadsheets with VBA Macro on Windows

Have you ever needed to run an Excel spreadsheet daily? I recently came across this scenario, and as a lazy programmer I thought: You can’t not automate this! I found a relatively simple solution and decided to document it.

I always choose a lazy person
to do a difficult job… Because she will find an easy way to do it.

bill Gates

I’ll explain how you can do this using the Task Scheduler (Windows Task Scheduler - already installed) to open; Run VBA Macros; To save; Close Excel. This solution allows for a wide variety of scheduling settings!

FOR THE SCHEDULER TO RUN THE COMPUTER MUST BE TURNED ON

prerequisites

All prerequisites are already installed by default on Windows:

• Task Scheduler
• Notepad (Or some neutral text editor)
• CScript (C:WindowsSystem32cscript.exe)

Creating the VBS file

The file that will make all the magic happen will be a VBS (Visual Basic Script) script. If you are familiar with VBA you will have no difficulty understanding the script commands.

open the Notepad and copy the content below:

‘Full path to excel spreadsheet ExcelFilePath = “C:UsershenriqueDocumentsworksheet_name.xlsm”

‘Scope and full name of the macro to run MacroPath = “Module1.MacroName”

‘We create an instance of excel Set ExcelApp = CreateObject(“Excel.Application”)

‘Do you want this instance to be visible? ExcelApp.Visible = True ‘or “False”

‘Prevent Excel from showing alerts ExcelApp.DisplayAlerts = False

‘We open the excel file Set wb = ExcelApp.Workbooks.Open(ExcelFilePath)

‘We run the macro ExcelApp.Run MacroPath

‘We save the excel file after executing the macro wb.Save

‘We came back with the alerts parameter to avoid problems with other spreadsheets ExcelApp.DisplayAlerts = True

‘We closed the Excel file wb.Close

‘We closed the Excel instance ExcelApp.Quit

‘Alert to notify when spreadsheet runs successfully MsgBox “Your spreadsheet automatically ran successfully at:” & TimeValue(Now), vbInformation

Now we need to replace some information:

1. Change the variable value ExcelFilePath to the exact location of the Excel file you want to open. It is important to enter both the correct name and the extension.
2. Change the variable value Macropath to the exact value of the macro you want to run.
3. In ExcelApp.Visible you can decide if you want the application to open an instance visible (true) or that it runs in the background (false). Some add-ins do not work in the background.
4. msgbox : Alert with visible message to the user if the macro has run successfully, if you don’t want to, just remove this line.

Let’s save this file with the extension .vbs : In Notepad when saving in the filename field type something like: excelautomatico.vbs and in file type select: All files . Good thing all the paths are correct and save this file somewhere safe where no one can accidentally remove it. Make a note of the saved file path as we will need it later!

Creating the schedule with Task Scheduler

To find the program just type in the start menu search scheduler task . 

To create a new task just click on the button on the right side: Create Task…

Create task - General tab 

At General tab you will fill in the name of the appointment and its description.

Tip: The description is optional but a good practice so that in the future you or someone else can understand what the hell this schedule does. Own experience, create an objective description!

On this tab we can also define whether we want the schedule to run when the user is not logged in to the computer, remembering again that to work the computer always needs to be turned on . I’ll assume you want to always run even with your computer locked: Select Run whether the user is logged in or not and enter your username and password to validate this option. 

Create Task - Triggers Tab 

At Triggers tab we configure the task schedules, click the button New to create and configure a new schedule. In the example below, we are creating a rule to run our schedule every day at 4:43 pm:

You can create more than one rule for each schedule.

Create task - Actions tab 

At Actions tab let’s map out what actions should be performed. To run the script created at the beginning of the tutorial we need to use a native Windows program called CScript which allows us to run our file .vbs : 

In the “Program/script” field add: “C:WindowsSystem32cscript.exe” 

Now let’s pass as an argument for the CScript which file we want it to run. Paste the full path of the file .vbs that we created in the beginning: 

In the “Add arguments (optional)” field, change the values and add something like: “Ç: Users Henrique excelautomatic .vbs” 

Both settings must be enclosed in quotes. 

Create Task - Other Tabs 

Some additional settings can be found on the other tabs, so I recommend you to check it out and see if any other settings are needed for your case.