Re: What is planned to replace VBA?

Ilia

(Opinion only, I know no more...)

I would imagine that VBA will be around in at least the next 10-12 years of releases. It is far more important to Office than Excel4 macros ever were and they are still supported in XL2007 after being 'discontinued' in XL5 (1993?). It will only have the major object model changes and gradually it will become 'weaker' as the depth of properties, methods, events, etc will just not get added as they are now.

MS and security concerns, dictate the code will need to be managed and compiled, etc in the future, so I would bet on VSTO being a 'future-proof' way as it supports all the main developer languages, VB, C#,C++, etc. although they will need to do something with the Alt+F11 start coding scenario we all love so much.

Crucially, I would bet on C# becoming the code variation of choice, but that really is *total* speculation.

You may find that a flavour of XML is incorporated, like with the file format and ribbon today for interoperability.

Just my £0.02

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
nick_hodgeTAKETHISOUT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
web: www.excelusergroup.org
web: www.nickhodge.co.uk





"ilia" <iasafiev@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:451606ed-488a-481a-83ef-534ba04e01a3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
XML can't really replace VBA by itself. If anything, it will be VSTO,
and even then just to supplement it as it does now. VSTO provides
some great functionality that's not native to VBA, but it's just se
much easier to press Alt+F11 and start banging out code. VBA is a
licensed product, not exclusive to just MS applications... I don't
think they'll be phasing it out.

On Jan 28, 8:32 am, XP <X...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know that VBA is still alive in Office 2007 and is reportedly (depending
upon which report you read) going to be supported for awhile. I love VBA, but
apparently VBA is going to be phased out. My feeling is that it is best to
get ahead of the game, welcome the change (and hopefully, improvements) and
begin learning the new thing.

So my question is, what is the new language that will replace VBA?

XML? VSTO? VSTA? I've heard and seen all these mentioned. Are there others I
don't know about?

What is the difference between them and what language should we really start
learning? What language will come incorporated into Office (as does VBA now)
that doesn't require another cash outlay of hundreds or thousands of dollars?

Any help or guidance on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

.