Excel 2008: Petition MS for return of VBA

[Scott Melendez]

If you find the removal of VBA is causing problems for you, please let
Microsoft know! Under the Help menu in Word or Excel, select Send Feedback
to Microsoft, and tell them you want VBA back in Office 2008!

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Scott -

That's certainly a good recommendation, but don't expect to have VBA support
"added back" to Office 2008 - it isn't simply a matter of downloading a file
as an update. If VBA ever returns it won't be before the next major release
somewhere in the future.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

If you find the removal of VBA is causing problems for you, please let
Microsoft know! Under the Help menu in Word or Excel, select Send
Feedback to Microsoft, and tell them you want VBA back in Office 2008!

Hi,

I second Scott and CyberTaz's suggestion, and would like to recommend
that if you send in such feedback, that instead of something terse like
"I want VBA" that you take a moment and give MacBU a very brief
description of why VBA is important to you. Specific scenarios and cases
are probably a lot more enlightening to MacBU than general requests.

Thanks.

-Jim

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I agree with you, but am pretty sure the MacBU knows it too. But feel free
to send in your message via the send feedback in the help menu.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

If you are like me and use Parallels, I’d probably leave that out of the
feedback, since that’s no incentive...Microsoft gets your money for
Office (twice) AND Windows...LOL (And do you really want to deal with
the UI mess that is Office 2007??)

Here’s a sample of what I was going to write:
“I would like the MacBU to realize that many, many Office: Mac users are
in cross-platform environments. The macros I encounter are usually quite
simple, done in Office 2003 or even Office 2000 by non-IT people who
probably don’t even know its VBA behind the scenes. While VBA is
“proprietary” to Office, and the competing Open Document standards
probably wouldn’t support VBA as a built-in macro language, they will
probably offer a degree of backwards compatibility with existing macros.
I don’t think many people are busy updating their macros for each
release of Office, but Microsoft and the MacBU should realize the
importance of being at least able to support already-existing code in
new releases. I know Office 2007 and Office 2008 dispense with some
legacy items (such as saving as a WKS worksheet – believe it or not,
some applications will only export to this format!). VBA macros are
still such an important piece of “legacy” Office, that the ability to
open macro-enabled documents should still be a key part of the suite. As
an IT manager in the industry for almost 15 years, backwards
compatibility has always been a must-have whenever moving from one
version of software to the next. I remember when Outlook 2000 had
problems opening Outlook 98 files, and Project 2003 couldn’t open
previous versions — it is a tremendous hit to productivity. I hope you
will consider giving Word and Excel 2008 the ability to run macros, and
restore full functionality in the next version.”

Something along those lines, stressing it is an important cross-platform
business function, its lack will slow adoption of Office 2008, and there
is a serious business case for it. Maybe the MacBU doesn’t quite realize
this; because the suggestion to use AppleScript and Automator may be
fine for an all Mac environment, the reality is there aren’t that many
of those.

Scott




Hi,

I second Scott and CyberTaz's suggestion, and would like to recommend
that if you send in such feedback, that instead of something terse like
"I want VBA" that you take a moment and give MacBU a very brief
description of why VBA is important to you. Specific scenarios and
cases
are probably a lot more enlightening to MacBU than general requests.

Thanks.

-Jim

Hi Scott,

FYI OpenOffice version 2.4 is a recent upgrade that is a major step
forward for VBA support in OpenOffice. Although still far behind the
Microsoft Office VBA, it is becoming more robust and could be a viable
alternative to Microsoft's office products on both Mac and Windows for
many spreadsheet users.

OpenOffice does not support VBA in word processing or presentations.
OpenOffice VBA does not support userforms and the object model is
different so not every command is implemented.

OpenOffice is not knocking the door down with VBA, but it has poked a
hole in the screen. You know what a small hole can do for mosquitoes!
Microsoft is very aware of this, but sure wouldn't hurt to remind them.

Personally, I think Microsoft Office 2004 is the best version of Office
ever produced, and OpenOffice still has a way to go to catch up to it.

-Jim