This Free Tool Replaces VBA UserForms in Excel

Alright, so this is a data entry form I built in about 2 minutes. It got collapsible sections, a date picker, dropdowns, checkboxes and much more. So when I hit this button here, everything gets saved straight into Excel. So when I open up my spreadsheet, here I can now see my data. Now if you want, you can also edit or delete any entry right from the form. Now for this to work, you don't need any VBA, there is nothing to install and you don't have to pay for anything. It's completely free and everything runs locally right inside your machine. So none of your data ever leaves your computer. Alright so without wasting much more of your time, let us dive in and let me show you how to create your own custom form in just a couple of minutes.

First things first, head over to the online form builder I put together and I will of course leave the link in the description box below. The way it works is pretty simple. You just drag and drop fields to build your form. So let's say I want to build a property inspection form. For that I will start by dragging in a text input field. And when I click on it, I can configure it however I want. So I can give it a label, add a placeholder, add some helper text and mark it as required. And you will also see there's a field ID down here. So this is basically what becomes your column header in Excel later. And the neat thing is, as soon as you start typing the label, it automatically generates a clean ID for you. So everything is in lowercase and spaces get replaced with underscores. But you can of course change it manually if you need to. Alright, so the name should be also required. So let me also tick that box here. Next up, I also want a date picker for the inspection date. So I will just drag over the date input, give it a label and also mark it as required. After that, let me also add another text input field for the property address. And for this one, I will also add a placeholder so that people know what format to use. Alright, next up, I also need a drop down. And this is going to be for the inspection type. So for my example, I will set it up with three options. Move in, move out and routine. Now by default, you only get two options, but you can just click this button here to add more. And one thing to keep in mind, the top field is the label. So that is what the user actually sees in the form. And the bottom one is the value, which is what gets stored in your Excel file. Okay, and with that in place, let me now also go ahead and add a section. Now sections are basically a way to group fields together to keep your form nice and organized. You will see what I mean in just a second. So let me click on it and give it a name. I will call this one here room conditions. Now by default, sections show up expanded in your form. But if you want them collapsed instead, you can just uncheck this option here. Alright, and now I can just start dragging in fields directly into this section here. So I will go with radio buttons for the overall conditions. And my options are excellent, good, fair and poor. And right after that, I also want to add some checkboxes. So I will drag them over and put them right below the conditions. And those checkboxes are going to be for any issues found during the inspection. Okay, and with that all done, let me also add one more section. Now this one could technically also go inside the room condition, so like a nested section. But in my case, I actually want it separate, so I will put it right below it. And this section here will be for my move out assessment. Now here's also where it gets interesting, because you can make sections conditional. What that means is you can show or hide an entire section based on what someone else selects in another field. So for my form, for example, I only want this move out assessment to show up when the inspection type is set to move out. So for that, I will select inspection type as a field and set the condition to equals. And then I just need to put in the value. So for that, if I go back and look at my inspection type dropdown, the value for the move out is right here. So I will just copy it to my clipboard. And then back in my section settings, I will just paste it in right in here. Alright, so with that, we are almost there. I will just add two more fields inside the section. So I will add some radio buttons and also a text area. So let me quickly do that. Alright, and here's now my final form.

Now to actually generate it, I just need to hit this button here. And up here, I can now also set a title and description. And these will show up right at the top of the form. So once everything is filled out, I just click on the green download button. This will now save the form to my downloads folder. And when I navigate there, you will now see the form saved as an HTML file. So to open it, just double click on the file. And also, just so you know, even though this is an HTML file, none of your data ever leaves your computer. So as you can also see here, this file is still saved locally on my machine.

Okay, and with that said, let me now fill out the form. First, I will enter my name. Then for the inspection date, we've got a date picker here, which makes it of course much easier to input the date. After that, I will also put in the address and set the inspection type. And below the dropdown, you will now also see our section. So when I click on it, I can now see the room conditions, where we have our radio buttons and also the checkboxes. All right, so let me fill out everything. And once that is done, I just need to click on this button here. Now, since this is our first entry, it's going to ask us where to save the Excel file. I will just keep it in my downloads folder. And once I confirm, a new spreadsheet gets created. And we are now also connected to it. And you can see that by the status right up here. And if I scroll down a bit, the entry also shows up at the bottom of the form.

Now, before we move on, let me also quickly check the actual workbook. So here in my downloads folder, there's our spreadsheet. And when I open it and navigate to the entry sheet, here we can also now see our data. And you will notice the deposit columns are empty, which makes sense, because that section wasn't even visible in our form. And you will also see that the submission date and time got added automatically. Okay, so now that we know that everything is working, let me go back to the form and add another entry. To do that, I will first clear the form by using this button here. So let me now fill it out again.

But this time, I will change the inspection time to move out. And now as you can see, the move out assessment section appears. So after filling out the room conditions, let me open the assessment section. And here you've got the radio buttons and also the text area input field. Alright, so after filling out, I just need to click this button here. And now the data gets added to our Excel file again. And additionally, once again, you will see the entries here at the bottom of the form. And if you ever need to find a specific entry, you can also use the search box here and the result gets filtered right away.

Also, when I scroll over to the right, you will see there are two action buttons. So here you can either delete an entry or update it. So if I click on edit here, it puts all the data back into the form. And now I can change whatever I need, for example, updating the move out assessment. And once I'm done with my changes, I just need to click on update here. So that means if I scroll down, you can now see this entry has been updated. And of course, this is also reflected in the Excel file.

OK, and with that, let me also show you one more very important feature, which is, of course, the dark mode. So here, if you use this little toggle, you can switch between the light and the dark mode.

And also one more thing I want to point out is if you close this form and reopen it or you just refresh the page, you will notice that you are no longer connected to your spreadsheet. And this is indicated here at the top. And you will also see that no entries are shown at the bottom. But don't worry, your data is still safe and everything is still in the Excel file. You just need to reconnect it using this button here and then select your workbook again. And just like that, all the entries are now back.

OK, so before I wrap up, let me also go over a few things you should know. So first, this only works with Chromium based browsers. So that is Chrome, Edge or Para or Brave. That also means it won't work with Firefox or Safari. Also another thing worth mentioning is that you could technically take an existing workbook of yours, copy the entry sheet into it and connect it with the form. So this is technically possible, but I wouldn't really recommend it because when the form writes data, any custom formatting or formulas you have might break. So it is better just to keep the entries in a separate workbook. And if you need that data somewhere else, the best way would be to pull it in using something like BBA or Power Query.

OK, and one last thing. If you want even more control and you know a bit of Python, then I've also got another Excel form builder you might want to check out. So this one actually generates Python code directly for you. And I will of course leave the link to this form builder also in the description box below. So here the idea is pretty much the same. You design your form, add your fields, choose your field types. And once you're done, you just click on this button here. This will now generate a Python file, which looks like this. And when you run that file, you will get this entry form. And of course, the neat thing here is if you need to change anything, you can just go into the code and adjust it. So if that sounds interesting, then check out this video right here.

In that video, I go into more detail on how it all works. And I will also show you how to compile the whole thing into a standalone executable file. So that way, you can just share it with other people. And they don't even need to have Python installed on their machine. Alright, so I hope these form builders are useful to you. And if you've got any questions, please let me know in the comments below. And as always, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next video.