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#1
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Excel and .NET
Hi.
The latest Excel I've used is 2002, which has VBA. Works great. I don't know if Excel 2003 has VBA. My guess is that a future Excel will use VB.NET instead of VBA (or maybe both at the same time) Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Cheers! -- Rob van Gelder - http://www.vangelder.co.nz/excel |
#2
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Excel and .NET
Excel 2003 has VBA.
I have not seen any public MSoft statement on VBA. It seems reasonable to me to assume that MSoft will want its Excel customers to migrate to Excel 2004/2005 etc, and that many/most large customers would find this very difficult to do without VBA and good compatibility. But plainly MSoft would like to eventually get rid of VB6 and VBA in order to maximise the returns from its massive investment in .Net: I just dont see how they are going to manage this within the next 7-8 years from either a technical or business perspective. regards Charles ______________________ Decision Models The Excel Calculation Site. www.DecisionModels.com "Rob van Gelder" wrote in message ... Hi. The latest Excel I've used is 2002, which has VBA. Works great. I don't know if Excel 2003 has VBA. My guess is that a future Excel will use VB.NET instead of VBA (or maybe both at the same time) Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Cheers! -- Rob van Gelder - http://www.vangelder.co.nz/excel |
#3
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Excel and .NET
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:09:30 +1200, "Rob van Gelder"
wrote: The latest Excel I've used is 2002, which has VBA. Works great. I don't know if Excel 2003 has VBA. Indeed it does. My guess is that a future Excel will use VB.NET instead of VBA (or maybe both at the same time) Possibly. Frankly I doubt that we can know for sure unless someone named Gates or Ballmer would care to stop by the group and drop a word or two. But bear in mind that Excel has been kept at (for example) its annoying 256 column * 65536 row size for four consecutive releases now. MS doesn't seem to be in a hurry to do anything which would damage backward compatibility... or indeed move the product forward. (See, for example, John Walkenbach's review of XL2003 at http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/xl2003.htm) My guess, and it's little more than that, is that you'll see VBA around for a while yet. Certainly nothing will happen until the next Office release, which won't be for at least 18 months to 2 years. And I'll be VERY surprised if that dumps VBA entirely, even if it introduces support for .Net. The big problem is that there is going to be a very, very big installed base of users running from 97 to 2003, and I can't see 2005 (or whatever it's called) making its automation code unusable by them. Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Personally? I just avoid variants and non-zero based arrays, though I've always done that anyway. If you want a good run-down on the differences between the two, you'll find one he http://www.mvps.org/vb/ --------------------------------------------------------- Hank Scorpio scorpionet who hates spam is at iprimus.com.au (You know what to do.) * Please keep all replies in this Newsgroup. Thanks! * |
#4
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Excel and .NET
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:06:53 +1000, Hank Scorpio
wrote: Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Personally? I just avoid variants and non-zero based arrays, though I've always done that anyway. If you want a good run-down on the differences between the two, you'll find one he http://www.mvps.org/vb/ Sorry, that just links to the home page. Go to the "Soapbox" in the left hand navigation pane, then the "Is it Visual Basic Any More" heading. http://www.mvps.org/vb/rants/vfred.htm should also work. --------------------------------------------------------- Hank Scorpio scorpionet who hates spam is at iprimus.com.au (You know what to do.) * Please keep all replies in this Newsgroup. Thanks! * |
#5
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Excel and .NET
Hi Rob,
The latest Excel I've used is 2002, which has VBA. Works great. I don't know if Excel 2003 has VBA. Yes it does. My guess is that a future Excel will use VB.NET instead of VBA (or maybe both at the same time) I think it would be financial suicide for Microsoft stop including VBA in Office; the large numbers of their corporate customers that have significant VBA-based applications would simply not upgrade to that version. On the other hand, the Visual Studio Tools for Office is an attempt to bring Office to the .Net developer, so it's a reasonable assumption that efforts will be made to also bring .Net to the Office developer (which is a VERY different prospect!). When/if .Net is introduced to Office, I'm pretty sure that it will be alongside VBA and the market will decide how much it's used. Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? Yes, VBA has a long future. Considering that the XLM macro language was last used as the primary programming language in Excel 4, but is still supported some ten years later in Excel 2003, I would expect to see support for VBA remaining for (at least) a similar timeframe. What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Not a lot <g. Anything you *do* do now is just as likely to lead you down the wrong path as the correct one. If we can assume that .Net will be introduced to Office using VB.Net and/or C# (i.e. not a new VBA.Net language), you might want to start learning about VB.Net, the .Net framework and the issues that occur when converting VB6 applications to VB.Net, as most of those are likely to occur with VBA too. Regards Stephen Bullen Microsoft MVP - Excel www.BMSLtd.ie |
#6
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Excel and .NET
Thanks Stephen.
Good point about XLM. Ten years is a lot for any product. Cheers -- Rob van Gelder - http://www.vangelder.co.nz/excel "Stephen Bullen" wrote in message ... Hi Rob, The latest Excel I've used is 2002, which has VBA. Works great. I don't know if Excel 2003 has VBA. Yes it does. My guess is that a future Excel will use VB.NET instead of VBA (or maybe both at the same time) I think it would be financial suicide for Microsoft stop including VBA in Office; the large numbers of their corporate customers that have significant VBA-based applications would simply not upgrade to that version. On the other hand, the Visual Studio Tools for Office is an attempt to bring Office to the .Net developer, so it's a reasonable assumption that efforts will be made to also bring .Net to the Office developer (which is a VERY different prospect!). When/if .Net is introduced to Office, I'm pretty sure that it will be alongside VBA and the market will decide how much it's used. Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? Yes, VBA has a long future. Considering that the XLM macro language was last used as the primary programming language in Excel 4, but is still supported some ten years later in Excel 2003, I would expect to see support for VBA remaining for (at least) a similar timeframe. What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Not a lot <g. Anything you *do* do now is just as likely to lead you down the wrong path as the correct one. If we can assume that .Net will be introduced to Office using VB.Net and/or C# (i.e. not a new VBA.Net language), you might want to start learning about VB.Net, the .Net framework and the issues that occur when converting VB6 applications to VB.Net, as most of those are likely to occur with VBA too. Regards Stephen Bullen Microsoft MVP - Excel www.BMSLtd.ie |
#7
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Excel and .NET
Hank,
Thanks for the tips. I've just started using 0 based arrays in VB. I don't know why I treated VB differently. Every other language I code with uses 0 based. I'll give that link a read. Cheers -- Rob van Gelder - http://www.vangelder.co.nz/excel "Hank Scorpio" wrote in message ... On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:06:53 +1000, Hank Scorpio wrote: Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Personally? I just avoid variants and non-zero based arrays, though I've always done that anyway. If you want a good run-down on the differences between the two, you'll find one he http://www.mvps.org/vb/ Sorry, that just links to the home page. Go to the "Soapbox" in the left hand navigation pane, then the "Is it Visual Basic Any More" heading. http://www.mvps.org/vb/rants/vfred.htm should also work. --------------------------------------------------------- Hank Scorpio scorpionet who hates spam is at iprimus.com.au (You know what to do.) * Please keep all replies in this Newsgroup. Thanks! * |
#8
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Excel and .NET
Charles,
Thanks for the feedback. Cheers -- Rob van Gelder - http://www.vangelder.co.nz/excel "Charles Williams" wrote in message ... Excel 2003 has VBA. I have not seen any public MSoft statement on VBA. It seems reasonable to me to assume that MSoft will want its Excel customers to migrate to Excel 2004/2005 etc, and that many/most large customers would find this very difficult to do without VBA and good compatibility. But plainly MSoft would like to eventually get rid of VB6 and VBA in order to maximise the returns from its massive investment in .Net: I just dont see how they are going to manage this within the next 7-8 years from either a technical or business perspective. regards Charles ______________________ Decision Models The Excel Calculation Site. www.DecisionModels.com "Rob van Gelder" wrote in message ... Hi. The latest Excel I've used is 2002, which has VBA. Works great. I don't know if Excel 2003 has VBA. My guess is that a future Excel will use VB.NET instead of VBA (or maybe both at the same time) Does anyone know any different. Where is VBA going? Does it have a future? What should I be doing now to protect myself and ease migration/maintenance? Cheers! -- Rob van Gelder - http://www.vangelder.co.nz/excel |
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