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I didn't know whether to post this here or on the Snow Leopard forum. Since the question involves using files designed to run on non-Leopard Macs, I decided to put it here. Back in the not so good old days, Excel 4/Mac was a very helpful application. I'm not a programmer at all, but I was able to learn how to use Excel's Macro sheets. I designed a three-sheet set comprised of two sheets involved in calculating formulae for chemical reactions and a third, Macro sheet, that performed operations for and on the other two sheets. It took me over a month to put it together, but it was able to produce formulae in one or two seconds that would take a full working day to accomplish by hand. For me, it was a treasure. Then, Microsoft abandoned the Macro sheet in favor of VisualBasic and/or RealBasic. That move put me out of the Macro business. I was able to get the sheets to continue to work together using Excel 2004, but I had no resources to produce new Macro sheets or to substantially edit existing sheets. I'm in the process of trying to rewrite the two other sheets to accomplish the same goals without using the Macro sheet, but the going is slow and the result lacks the breadth of function that the old arrangement had. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Is there any way to continue to use the now long-abandoned Macro sheet in the modern environment? I still have the original floppy disks used to install Excel 4, but I doubt that they would be usable on Snow Leopard. Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give.
Unlike Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac NeoOffice 3 will handle the VB macros but I believe it does so by converting the VB macro to a NeoOffice/OpenOffice macro or at least I recall reading something about that once but I cannot find the reference at the moment. If Excel compatibility is not your primary concern you might take a look at NeoOffice Spreadsheets and their macro capability.

If you are patient, it appears the next Microsoft Office for Mac upgrade will once again offer VBA support but based on past performance I would not anticipate that support to be complete or fully functional.
Thanks for the reply. It is really appreciated. I think I'll limp along and try to incorporate as much functionality into the two sheets as I can and wait to see what the next great thing from MS will do. By investing my time in the existing files, I'll make decent progress. Time is limited and I don't want to risk a false start with another application.
Originally Posted By: JoBoy
Thanks for the reply. It is really appreciated. I think I'll limp along and try to incorporate as much functionality into the two sheets as I can and wait to see what the next great thing from MS will do. By investing my time in the existing files, I'll make decent progress. Time is limited and I don't want to risk a false start with another application.


I use NeoOffice... and although I don't use Spreadsheets,
the NeoOffice Help files describes in detail the conversion
of documents from Word, Excel or Powerpoint into OpenDocument
file formats. Sounds pretty simple to me, (and NeoOffice
is/was a free download.. although I believe they now want
contributions)

While MS Office has its place, NeoOffice has most all of
the capabilities of MS Office.



The macros from Excel 4 were not in any way related to VBA macros, which came later. I doubt that you would get it to work in Snow Leopard.
Originally Posted By: GrayShades
The macros from Excel 4 were not in any way related to VBA macros, which came later. I doubt that you would get it to work in Snow Leopard.


Sorry for the delayed reply. I've been immersed in a project. I agree that Basic programming came after the Microsoft macros. The funny part is that I can get them to run on 10.6.1 as long as I don't attempt to modify them. As soon as that is done, they stop working. I'm currently trying to put as much functionality into the formulae on the worksheets as I can in an attempt to compensate for the lost macros. It's tedious, but I have no choice. If I were a programmer, things would be different, but that's something I just accept.
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