Filed under: Software
No Visual Basic in Office 2008? No thanks.
MacWindows.com recently polled readers on their willingness to upgrade to Office 2008 for Mac, which will not include Visual Basic for macros and automation (as noted on this MacBU developer blog). Several readers said they won't upgrade to 2008 because they depend on VB cross-platform support.Where I work, we have an intricate system in place that manages and analyzes loads of data on a daily basis-a system that is dependent on homemade VB scripts. So, there's no way we're upgrading. Good job, Microsoft.
By the way, if you're left in a jam by this, check out MacTech Magazine's guide for moving from VB to Applescript, which will be available soon.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Martin Sketchley said 4:05PM on 2-21-2007
"The removal of VB means that existing macros in Office documents will be round-tripped across file open and save"
I don't understand what that means.
"..but you will not be able to edit them and you will not be able to run them on the Mac."
I understand what that means, but can't believe it. I have two macros I run on every report I work on, and a couple that do little things like paste plain text and convert text to lower case. But I won't be able to run them in the new version of Office?
I'm nothing short of stunned.
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smileyj68 said 4:15PM on 2-21-2007
This is incredibly low but I'm not at all surprised. MS knows that home users (their primary target for the MacBU) will buy it anyways, and this way they guarantee Macs can't make any inroads in the corporate market. It's a win/win for them (it just screws us).
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Martin said 4:23PM on 2-21-2007
I'm reading the material that's linked to here, but I'm not fully understanding it. It's saying that NO MACROS whatsoever will run in the new version of Office:mac, right?
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Joshua Ochs said 4:23PM on 2-21-2007
What a bunch of ill-informed people here. Clearly not a one of you has anything to do with serious software development.
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/
Go ahead, read that, and see if YOU can come up with a constructive response. Welcome to Real World software development.
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Joe said 4:43PM on 2-21-2007
By visiting this site, Joshua, you are in no way entitled to high-quality feedback regarding future applications. I don't understand why you think we must refrain from commenting unless we work in "serious software development."
Some people here don't write programs for a living. We use programs and earn our livings in other areas, some of which are not inherently inferior to your chosen career of "Real World software development." If you think our opinions are worth nothing, maybe you shouldn't be participating.
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MacBookOwner said 4:44PM on 2-21-2007
Wow, Joshua. Snotty much?
Looks like the people responding are USERS of the software, they don't need to be fucking software developers to be upset that a necessary feature was left out of the Office for the Mac.
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Max said 6:37AM on 2-22-2007
Well, if you can wait a week, you can use the new release of NeoOffice, which will support VBA (initially just in the spreadsheet module) for just $25. Wait another month, and it will be free
http://download.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php
NeoOffice has come on by leaps and bounds in the last 12 months, thanks to support from generous donors and some damn fine coding.
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Pete said 5:22PM on 2-21-2007
How advanced is applescript? Could we parse and execute the VB code ourselves (hooked via applescript into whatever other language may be required), or is there no access to the code at all?
Even incredibly slow, interpreted VB is better than cripple-ware.
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matthew said 5:29PM on 2-21-2007
Sorry for being selfish, but, as a home user, I'd rather get my hands on an intel-native Office as soon as possible instead of waiting 2 extra years for it to have VB support.
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henrrrik said 5:53PM on 2-21-2007
Novell and Sun are working together on VBA conversion support for OpenOffice.
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Tom said 5:52PM on 2-21-2007
If this is true, then it means the end of my Mac-only workplace. We do a *lot* of Excel statistical manipulation in VB which we supply to Windows-based clients.
I'll have to sell the 25+ macs we currently use and replace them with Windows boxes.
Another nail in the coffin of the concept of "Mac as business machine". This sucks.
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Zachary Hinchliffe said 6:04PM on 2-21-2007
#4's post was a bit snotty, but the blog post he linked to is actually a good read. You guys should read it.
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Eli said 6:33PM on 2-21-2007
Problem solved: http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=116
NeoOffice should get more love on TUAW :)
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mattrad said 1:57PM on 2-22-2007
Has anyone actually read the reasoning behind this?
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/
Yes it sucks but it would have been a nightmare to port it.
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Mr Lizard said 7:17PM on 2-21-2007
Re- NeoOffice
From the page Eli linked to:
"NeoOffice 2.1 will be one of the only available ongoing solutions for Mac users who use VBA macros in their Excel documents"
At first, I read the Schwied blog and thought 'Shame, but fair enough'
Then I thought, 'Not Microsoft's fault. They didn't know Apple was about to switch to Intel, did they?'
Then I learn that NeoOffice can handle VBA.
How is it that NeoOffice can do it, yet Microsoft can't.
Both had the same amount of notice that Apple was switching to Intel.
I have NeoOffice on this machine. I hardly use it, as I also have MS Office.
But this caught my eye:
"The NeoOffice 2.1 release will allow Mac users to utilize OpenXML documents prior to the announced availability of translators from Microsoft"
How is it NeoOffice seems to be developing at a much faster pace than MS Office?
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Joshua Ochs said 8:02PM on 2-21-2007
Yeah, it was snotty. I'm tired of people always assuming "such and such is evil or lazy" and oversimplifying complex problems:
"This is incredibly low but I'm not at all surprised. MS knows that home users (their primary target for the MacBU) will buy it anyways, and this way they guarantee Macs can't make any inroads in the corporate market. It's a win/win for them (it just screws us)."
That's what brought on the snottiness.
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RLH said 10:28PM on 2-21-2007
While I feel everyone's pain on this, I'm actually glad for the lack of VB support. Now I won't get all those annoying "features" in spreadsheets when all I want to do is fill in the blanks on my expense report. And, one of the last vectors for for Trojans has been shut off of my Mac!
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HS said 2:12AM on 2-22-2007
hehe That's like the Photoshop-developers leaving out the Layers-functionality or something from CS3 beacuse it's a lot of work.
Some feautures are necessities, and will have to be solved no matter what, you can't just opt out of key feautures, EVEN if you are a die-hard developer like Joshua..
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Paul D said 4:32AM on 2-22-2007
In response to Martin's post (#1), there are services you can install that will let you do text manipulation (change to lowercase, etc.) in any well-written app. Presumably services will be usable in Office 2008. I'd also presume they'll add a "paste and match formatting" option like Pages has.
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henrrrik said 5:54AM on 2-22-2007
The argument that it's too much work doesn't ring true to me. It wasn't too much work when it was originally done, so why is it too much work now?
According to the Wikipedia entry for Visual Basic for Applications MS plans to eventually phase out VBA in favour of Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA). With that in mind the decision to scrap VBA on the mac makes more sense.
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