Master VBA Web Scraping for Excel: A 2024 Guide ⚠️

Let’s talk about web scraping with VBA in Excel – it’s something I’ve been digging into lately and it’s a must.

Now you know Excel is a champ at data management and analysis but the real magic happens when you integrate it with VBA turning Excel into a web scraping beast.

Unlocking the Power of Web Queries

You might be surprised to hear that Excel actually has a built-in feature called web queries.

It’s a simple way to grab data directly from websites especially those tables you see on web pages.

Think of it as having a built-in browser within Excel.

Let’s say you want to pull data from a website like Books to Scrape.

Here’s how you’d do it:

1. Go to the “Data” tab in Excel.
2. Click on “Get External Data” and choose “From Web.”
3. Paste the URL of the Books to Scrape page in the window and hit “Go.”
4. Excel will analyze the webpage and show you all the tables it can find. Select the one you want and click “OK.”

Boom! The data is loaded into your Excel spreadsheet.

Simple right? But here’s the catch – web queries are mainly for grabbing structured tables.

For all those other HTML elements like lists paragraphs and so on you’ll need something more powerful.

The Web Scraping Powerhouse: VBA

This is where VBA comes in.

It’s like the secret weapon in Excel’s arsenal.

Think of VBA as a mini programming language embedded within Excel.

It allows you to automate things customize Excel and even talk to the outside world including the internet.

Getting Started with VBA

You’ll need Microsoft 365 to work with VBA.

Here’s how you set up your Excel environment:

1. Open Excel and create a new spreadsheet.
2. Right-click the ribbon at the top and select “Customize the Ribbon.”
3. Tick the box next to “Developer” and click “OK.”
4. The “Developer” tab will appear. Click on it and then click on “Visual Basic” (or use the shortcut Alt + F11).
5. Click “Insert” and then “Module” to create a new module.

You’ll see a blank area where you can write your VBA code.

VBA Fundamentals

If you’re new to VBA you might want to check out some online tutorials or Microsoft’s official learning page.

But here’s the gist:

• Procedures: These are like mini programs that carry out specific tasks. There are two types: sub-procedures and functions.
• Sub-Procedures: These are simple sets of instructions enclosed in Sub tags that execute a task but don’t return any data.
• Functions: Reusable sets of code that you can call again and again potentially returning data.

A Simple VBA Example

Let’s create a script that opens Internet Explorer visits a website and then prints its HTML content to the Immediate Window (a debug window in VBA):

Sub PrintHTML()
    Dim IE As Object URL As String HTML As String

    ' Set the website URL
    URL = "https://www.example.com"

    ' Create a new instance of Internet Explorer
    Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
    IE.Visible = True ' Make it visible (optional)
    IE.Navigate URL

    ' Wait for the page to load
    Do While IE.Busy = True Or IE.readyState <> 4
        DoEvents
    Loop

    ' Get the HTML content
    HTML = IE.Document.body.innerHTML

    ' Print to Immediate Window
    Debug.Print HTML

    ' Close Internet Explorer
    IE.Quit
    Set IE = Nothing
End Sub

To run this script click the green arrow icon above the code window or press F5. You’ll see the HTML code dumped into the Immediate Window.

Targeted Scraping with VBA

Now let’s take things a step further.

We can make VBA target specific elements on a webpage and extract data exactly what we need.

Let’s go back to Books to Scrape and grab all the book titles from the first page.

1. Inspect the page’s HTML. You’ll find the book titles within the <article> elements that have the class product_pod. The titles themselves are within <h3> tags specifically as the title attribute of the <a> tag inside.

2. Here’s the modified VBA code:

Sub ScrapeBookTitles()
    Dim IE As Object URL As String doc As HTMLDocument titles As Object title As Object

    ' Set the URL
    URL = "https://books.toscrape.com/"

    ' Create an Internet Explorer instance
    Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
    IE.Visible = True
    IE.Navigate URL

    ' Wait for the page to load
    Do While IE.Busy = True Or IE.readyState <> 4
        DoEvents
    Loop

    ' Get the HTML document
    Set doc = IE.Document

    ' Find all elements with the class 'product_pod'
    Set titles = doc.querySelectorAll(".product_pod")

    ' Loop through each element
    Dim i As Long
    For i = 0 To titles.Length - 1
        ' Get the book title
        Set title = titles(i).querySelector("h3 a")
        ' Print to Excel spreadsheet
        Sheet1.Cells(i + 1 1).Value = title.title

    Next i

    ' Clean up
    IE.Quit
    Set IE = Nothing
End Sub

This script will open Books to Scrape find all the book titles and neatly output them into your Excel spreadsheet.

You can customize this code to extract any data you need from the page.

Proxy Power

As you get into serious web scraping using proxies becomes essential.

Proxies act as intermediaries between you and the website you’re scraping masking your IP address and helping you avoid rate limiting and bans.

Think of it like this: Websites sometimes get suspicious if the same IP address keeps hitting them with requests.

Proxies spread out your requests from different locations making your scraping look more natural.

To set up proxies in Windows you’ll need to configure your proxy settings:

1. Go to “Settings” > “Network & Internet” > “Proxy.”
2. Choose “Manual proxy setup” and then “Edit.”
3. Enter the proxy server address and port number.

Now all your web requests will go through the proxy server.

You can also use proxy services like SmartProxy that offer dedicated residential mobile or datacenter proxies.

Expanding Your Horizons

Web scraping with VBA in Excel is a powerful combination allowing you to automate data gathering and integration with your Excel analysis workflows.

Here are some additional ideas to explore:

• Scheduled Scraping: Use VBA’s Timer function to run your scraping scripts on a regular basis updating your Excel data.
• Data Manipulation: Combine your scraped data with Excel’s powerful formulas and functions to analyze and visualize your findings.
• API Integration: Use VBA to communicate with web APIs allowing you to access even more data.

Remember to scrape responsibly and ethically.

Respect websites’ terms of service and never use scraping for malicious purposes.

By mastering VBA web scraping you can unlock a wealth of information transforming Excel from a data management tool to a data-gathering powerhouse.