But many people don’t realize it’s possible to make Excel play a sound using Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). This Excel tutorial will explain how to sound an alarm in Excel when a condition is met.
How to Ring an Alarm in Excel
Two steps are involved in getting Excel to play a sound based on a particular trigger. First, you must add custom code enabling Excel to play the sound. Then, you need to tell Excel what event or value will trigger the sound. To do this, you must create a new rule using an Excel VBA macro. This sounds complicated, but don’t worry—all you need to do is copy and paste the code below and then change some basic parameters.
How to Create an Alarm in Excel
Function MakeABeep() as String Beep MakeABeep = “” End Function
How to Trigger the Alarm in Excel
Next, you need to add conditional formatting to the cell you would like to play a sound upon a specific event. This will depend on what you want the trigger to be, so you might need to know how to use the various Excel formulas to make it work exactly as planned. Here’s a basic example showing how to get cell A1 to play a sound if it reaches 100: When the A1 cell value reaches 101, a system sound will play.
How to Get Excel to Play a Custom Sound
You can get Excel to play multiple custom sounds rather than relying on the single system sound. This way, you can set up multiple alarms to ring when different conditions are met. #If Win64 Then Private Declare PtrSafe Function PlaySound Lib “winmm.dll” _ Alias “PlaySoundA” (ByVal lpszName As String, _ ByVal hModule As LongPtr, ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Boolean #Else Private Declare Function PlaySound Lib “winmm.dll” _ Alias “PlaySoundA” (ByVal lpszName As String, _ ByVal hModule As Long, ByVal dwFlags As Long) As Boolean #End If Const SND_SYNC = &H0 Const SND_ASYNC = &H1 Const SND_FILENAME = &H20000 Function AlarmSound() As String Call PlaySound(“C:\Users\User\Downloads\sound.wav”, _ 0, SND_ASYNC Or SND_FILENAME) AlarmSound = “” End Function Note: In this template code, “AlarmSound” was used instead of “MakeABeep.” Both of these can be written as whatever you would like. For example, if you wanted multiple alarms to ring for different conditions, you could use “Alarm1,” “Alarm2,” and so on.
What Kind of Alarms Can You Create in Excel?
Excel is a powerful tool, and it includes several formulas you can use to format your data exactly how you want it. To use these rules, click the Home tab and click Conditional Formatting. Here are a few examples of data conditions that you can tell Excel to play an alarm for:
Data Management Has Never Been Easier
Microsoft Office’s Excel is one of the most powerful data validation and analysis tools on the market and has been for a long time. Whether you want your Excel workbook to display your data in an easy-to-understand manner or format cells to notify you when conditions are met, Excel has the tools for you.
