LinkedIn is one of the most influential social media networks. LinkedIn enables you to network with similar industry people, and professional organizations in your industry as well as others. You can invite anyone to connect and accept their invitations to connect with you. If you are a company/professional and want to connect a large number of profiles then manual sending LinkedIn Connect requests is a time-consuming task. In this blog, we will learn how we can create a Selenium script in VBA to send automatic Connect requests by already saved LinkedIn profile URL in MS Excel. First, you need to install Selenium for VBA. 

Step 1: Create MS Excel Macro-Enable file

• Create a new MS Excel Macro-Enable file with the name LinkedInProfile.xlsm.
• Add LinkedIn profile URL in Column A as shown in the figure.
• Add two buttons from Developer->Insert->Button with the name Open Browser, Send Connect.

 

Step 2: Setup VBA Editor for script

• Open the VBA editor by pressing Alt+F11 or Developer->Visual Basic.
• In VBA Editor, insert a new module from the menu Insert->Module. New module Module1 will be added to your VBA Project.
• Add reference for Selenium by menu Tools->References and choose Selenium Type Library.

 

Step 3: Create Open Browser Script

• First, we need to create a script that will open the browser. But why do we need a separate button and code for opening the browser? This is because we don’t want to log in to LinkedIn each time when the browser loads. So the first time when we open the browser then we will log in with our LinkedIn credentials. Then next time we don’t need to log in again.
• Add the below code in the newly created Module1.
• Note: The code driver.AddArgument “user-data-dir=” & ActiveWorkbook.Path & “\vbauserdata” means that we are defining the user data directory so all our logins/history/cache will be saved in this vbauserdata directory. This directory will be created in the same directory where our LinkedInProfile.xlsm is saved.

Option Explicit

' Global Variables
Dim driver As New WebDriver
Dim By As New Selenium.By
    

Sub OpenBrowser()
    On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
    
    If MsgBox("Are you sure to open Chrome Browser?", vbQuestion + vbYesNo) = vbNo Then Exit Sub
    
    
    driver.AddArgument "user-data-dir=" & ActiveWorkbook.Path & "\vbauserdata"
    driver.Start "Chrome"
    driver.Get "https://www.linkedin.com"
    
    
    Exit Sub
ErrorHandler:
    MsgBox Err.Description, vbCritical
End Sub

Step 4: Create Send Connect Request Script

• Add the below code in the newly created Module1 just after the previous code.

Sub ConnectProfile()
    On Error GoTo ErrorHandler

    Dim i As Integer, startRow As Integer, endRow As Integer
    Dim linkedInURL As String
    
    '''Our profile will start form row 2 and can read till 5000 rows or no profile found
    startRow = 2
    endRow = 5000

    Application.DisplayStatusBar = True

    '''Read Excel file
    For i = startRow To endRow
        linkedInURL = ""
        
        linkedInURL = Sheets("ProfileURL").Range("B" & i).Value

        ''If there is no LinkedIn URL then exit script
        If InStr(linkedInURL, "linkedin") = 0 Then
            Exit For
        End If

        Application.StatusBar = "Running: " & linkedInURL

        ' Open current profile
        driver.Get linkedInURL
        
        ' HTML Code is taken by Inspecting element
        If driver.IsElementPresent(By.XPath("//div[@class='pvs-profile-actions ']//button[contains(@aria-label, 'Invite ')]")) = True Then
            Set connectButton = driver.FindElementByXPath("//div[@class='pvs-profile-actions ']//button[contains(@aria-label, 'Invite ')]")
            
            driver.ExecuteScript "arguments[0].click();", connectButton
            
            '' Send Connect Request
            Set sendButton = driver.FindElementByXPath("//button[@aria-label='Send now']")
            driver.ExecuteScript "arguments[0].click();", sendButton
    
            Application.Wait Now + #12:00:02 AM#
            
            Sheets("ProfileURL").Range("C" & i).Value = "Connect Request Sent"
        End If
    Next i

    Application.StatusBar = ""

    MsgBox "Script is completed successfully!", vbInformation

    Exit Sub
ErrorHandler:
    MsgBox Err.Description, vbCritical
    
    Application.StatusBar = ""
End Sub

Step 4: Assign Macros to Buttons

• Close VBA Editor if it is already open.
• Right-click on Open Browser and assign macro OpenBrowser. As well as assign ConnectProfile to Send Connect button.

 

Step 5: Running Script

• Click on the Open Browser button, it will open the Chrome browser. Open LinkedIn and log in with your credentials.
• In Excel paste all LinkedIn profiles in the B column to send Connect requests and Save data.
• Now click on Send Connect button. It will read the LinkedIn profiles from the B column one by one and click on Connect button to send requests for all profiles.
• After all, profiles are complete, the script will show the message Script is completed successfully!