Working with VBA

Since SeoTools 6.0, most functions run asynchronously. This offers many advantages, such as greatly reduced calculation time and the ability to do other things in Excel while the calculations are running. However, this also means that traditional VBA scripts, which relies on formula based output, will fail. In order to fix this, we recommend two approaches.

1. Disable Async

Temporarily make Async functions run synchronously (easier to write VBA but slower)

  1. Open SeoTools.Config.Xml

  2. Add the following line according to the picture below:
    <RunAsyncUdfsSynchronously>true</RunAsyncUdfsSynchronously> Disabling async in config settings file

Example Scripts Based on Disable Async

Extracting Twitter User Bio:

Extracting Twitter user bio fields with VBA

VBA_Twitter.xlsm

    Sub GetBio()
      Dim row As Integer
      Dim col As Integer
      row = 2
      col = 2
      While ActiveSheet.Cells(row, 1) <> ""
      ActiveSheet.Cells(row, col) "=XPathOnUrl(A" & row & ", ""//p[@class='ProfileHeaderCard-bio u-dir']"")"
      ActiveSheet.Cells(row, col).Copy
      ActiveSheet.Cells(row, col).PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks _
      :=False, Transpose:=False
      row = row + 1
     Wend
    End Sub

Extracting an array of all links with CsQueryOnUrl:

Using CsQueryOnUrl with VBA

VBA_Links.xlsm

    Sub GetLinks()
      Dim row As Integer
      Dim col As Integer
      row = 2
      col = 2
      Dim range As Variant
      Dim addr1, addr2 As String
      While Sheets("Example").Cells(row, 1) <> ""
        Dim xArray() As Variant
        xArray =  Evaluate("=TRANSPOSE(CsQueryOnUrl(A" & row & ",  ""a"", ""href""))")
         addr1 = Sheets("Example").Cells(row,  col).Address
         addr2 = Sheets("Example").Cells(row, col).Offset(0, UBound(xArray) - 1).Address
         Sheets("Example").range(addr1 & ":" & addr2).Value = xArray
       row = row + 1
       Wend
     End Sub

2. Temp Formula

Second option is to output results with formula and then replace results with values when SeoTools fetching is complete. A simple way to know when the fetching is done is to use a Countif formula and count how many cells contain "#GETTING_DATA". When the number reaches zero, it is safe to copy and paste the content as values.

Example Scripts Based on Temp Formula

Extracting Tweets Metadata:

Extracting tweets metadata with VBA

VBA_Tweets.xlsm

Sub FetchTweets()
  Dim RowCount As Long
  RowCount = Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
Range("B2:B" & RowCount).Formula = "=Dump(Connector(""Twitter.TweetLookup"",A2,""Id,Date,Tweet,Retweets,Likes,UserName,Followers"",TRUE))"
End Sub

Sub Clean()
  Columns(2).Copy
  Columns(2).PasteSpecial xlPasteValues
End Sub

See

Cookbook

Guides

Related Functions


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