I appreciate your input guys, it has helped me understand the issues. For my
'professional edition' there would be no problem in requiring my users to
have excel but for my 'personal version I will definitely have to use VB as
it will probably be licensed at about US$ 500 per year and so excel will
double it's price.

For the professional edition I will include a proprietory algorithm which
needs to be protected does anyone know anything about Savvysoft's turbo
excel it looks like an excellent solution for protecting an algorithm?

Anyway thanks again for your input, Mark:)




"cush" wrote in message
...
The main problem with using just Excel is that you can NOT protect the vba
code. There are programs widely available that will unprotect your
worksheet/ workbook and vba protection instantly, leaving it open to
misuse.

One way around this is to use xl wrapped inside of a VB front loader.
A good source to check out is Professional Excel Development
by Steven Bullen et al

This requires a good knowledge of vba programming. It takes a simple
application through several stages of development from a stand-alone
spreadsheet using only xl formulas, to one using vba routines, class
modules,
addins, VB, C, and XML.
Whatever your level, you may find it helpful to get to the next step. I'm
in my 3rd read and getting into the VB level. (Not a paid advert.) Hope
this
helps

"Mark Stephens" wrote:

I am a self taught excel programmer and am embarking on development of
software for mass worldwide distribtion. Is there any reason why i should
consider using VB (which I have never used) over VBA within excel. Seems
to
me excel can do everything I need and I understand that even if I were to
switch to VB my users will still have to have excel to use the program,
so
is there any benefits in switching?

Sirry it's a pretty basi cquestion but there doesn't seem to be much info
on
google on the subject.

Thanks and regards, Mark Stephens