For the genuinely confused.
Today we’re going to jump into the wildly specific world of MicroStation, which is yet another software that’s automatable with Visual Basic for Applications.
Continue reading “VBA: How to Start Scripting in MicroStation”
Here’s a fun trick for all you VBA grammar enthusiasts out there. All 6 of you.
There exists something called a SynonymInfo Object. It lets you access things like definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and parts of speech in Word. Cool beans, right?
Continue reading “VBA: How to Extract Parts of Speech in Word”
This is my first and possibly only foray into the madness that is constructing a YouTube video. I’ve been watching the Vlog Brothers for years, and I’ve never appreciated the effort that goes into it. Pick a topic, write a script, animate the graphics, trim clips, find background music, and also, cut around all your foul language because YouTube does not take kindly to that.
I did that after doing a lot of other research on the basics of YouTube for a non-YouTuber.
So, as a supplement to this VBA video tutorial, I’ve condensed my background research for anyone out there who might also be considering a jump from WordPress to YouTube.
I’ve found that many people see Python, the programming language, much the same way they see Pythons, the scary-ass snakes. If you haven’t dealt with it before, chances are you’re going to think it’s not to be trusted. There’s no way I could convince my mom, for instance, to open up a .py file on her computer.
She will, however, open up a Word document no questions asked.
It’s friggin’ magic. FileSystemObject is how you run scripts on your files and folders in VBA. You want to create 100 files on your desktop automatically? It’ll let you do that. You want to delete files with specific names in a directory? It’ll let you do that too. It’s also pretty crucial to viruses like Anna Kournikova and the Love Bug, which I’ve been looking at recently. So here’s how to make a FileSystemObject.
I don’t advocate the use of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, or anything else that can screw up someone’s system or violate their privacy.
It’s oddly satisfying to peak inside them though. Like disassembling a clock.
Kournikova was my first pick because she’s written in Visual Basic, which isn’t too painful to read. She’s also so old it’s unlikely anyone would be able to use this walk-through to create something malicious. Old in malware years anyway. In human years, she’ll be seventeen next month.
Continue reading “Malware Anatomy: The Anna Kournikova Worm”
Short one today.
I’m getting ready to write a post on worms and realized it’d be really nice if Word could mimic the font formatting that happens in the Visual Basic editor. Color coding helps me see relationships a lot easier when I’m trying to get my head around another person’s script.
Continue reading “VBA: How to Customize Font to Specific Text in Word”
Alright, here’s something I’ve been meaning to learn for weeks. It’s probably going to be the most boring post of all time for anyone who isn’t an Excel nerd. In fact, if you aren’t an Excel nerd, just run. Run far, far away.
Alright, I ran short of time this week, so I don’t have a tutorial. But I DO have another fun UDF (User-Defined Function)–this one takes two parameters. Both need to be strings made of comma separated numbers. The function excludes the second set of numbers from the output.
A couple months ago, I did the exact opposite of this. I called it the ListToRange() Function. It’s weirdly helpful at work because I have to go back and forth between having numbers listed out and then having them clustered for other things.
Continue reading “VBA: How to Get A List From a Range of Numbers”
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