Visual Basic for Office 2011 - 03/09/11 05:43 AM
I've concluded that I need to explore learning Visual Basic for Office 2011. Currently, I'm running Office 2008 that does not support VB. For many years, I have resisted learning to use programming tools. I've considered my time more valuable on the scientific side of my job and have relied on programmers to do the programming. The only exception to this was when I created macros for Excel 4 in the old days, but Microsoft pulled the rug out from under my considerable efforts and destroyed my extremely helpful and time-saving macros by discontinuing support for them. Primarily, I'm interested in reinstating my Excel macros by using VB, but I'm willing to learn to program in VB or some other language to obtain maximum utility from the language. However, I'm leery about investing a lot of time and effort if Microsoft is likely to discontinue VB after I've invested my effort to learn it. With this background, I'd greatly appreciate knowledgeable programmers answering these questions:
1. Is VB exclusive property of Microsoft or is it available from other sources?
2. Does VB only work on MS products or can I make stand-alone applications with it that run on Mac OSX?
3. Microsoft has been ruthless in abandoning macros twice in the past. Is there some way to program macros in a language other than VB that will operate on Excel regardless of whether MS "supports" them or not? (this may be a dumb question, but I'm motivated by traumatic past experience with MS)
I think you can see where I'm headed with this, if there are answers to questions I haven't asked that would guide me in the right direction, please tell me what I should have asked and also please provide the answers. If this last request requires mind-reading, just ignore it. <grin> Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
1. Is VB exclusive property of Microsoft or is it available from other sources?
2. Does VB only work on MS products or can I make stand-alone applications with it that run on Mac OSX?
3. Microsoft has been ruthless in abandoning macros twice in the past. Is there some way to program macros in a language other than VB that will operate on Excel regardless of whether MS "supports" them or not? (this may be a dumb question, but I'm motivated by traumatic past experience with MS)
I think you can see where I'm headed with this, if there are answers to questions I haven't asked that would guide me in the right direction, please tell me what I should have asked and also please provide the answers. If this last request requires mind-reading, just ignore it. <grin> Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.