Spreadsheet Basic - a Basic Language for Excel

Spreadsheet Basic (spBasic) is a computer language designed to be used in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheets. It is modeled after the easy to use 'Basic' language which has been around for 40+ years and is familiar to many people. SpBasic makes it easy to write programs to create, analyze, and display data in Excel. The data can be formatted and displayed on worksheets, Charts, and Graphs using Excel's many resources.

The main purpose of spBasic is to make it easy for the user to create and display information, and also to collect and analyze data and display results. It's also used to control hardware and instrumentation through PC interfaces to collect and display data measurements on charts and graphs.

To use spBasic, you write a spBasic Program using the spBasic Edit Window. The program is a series of spBasic 'statements'. A simple example is,

   if d3 > 1 then
     d1 = d3
     d2 = 4*d1 + 8
   end if

The first statement is a conditional 'If'. If worksheet cell 'D3' value is greater than 1, then all the statements below it will be executed until the 'End If' is reached. The statement 'd1 = d3' sets the worksheet cell 'D1' value to cell 'D3' value, and the statement 'd2 = 4*d1 + 8' sets worksheet cell 'D2' to 4*d1 + 8. When you run this program, if cell 'D3' = 2, then cell 'D1' is set to 2, and cell 'D2' is set to 16. This is a simple example, the programs can get as complex as you need, much more complex than you can fit in a Excel cell formula.

SpBasic uses it's own program edit window and is much simpler to use than Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It also has all the familiar Basic statements, 'If', 'For-Next', 'Do', 'Do While', etc., and may others. It can use all the Functions available in Excel, plus any custom functions and subroutines you may want to write in VBA. It also has an extensive 'Help' facility where you can add custom help for any statement you add. Applications can range from the simplest program as shown above to complex hardware and instrumentation control. Both simple and complex program examples are included in the free fully functional download.

Try spBasic, you'll like it!