GURUS: Is VB6 better than Office Developer Edition?

[Sanjay Singh]

I have developed a few addins for Microsoft Outlook with MS Office Developer
Edition. The addins have been deployed to quite a few users and they work
fine. I am now planning a few new addins and also upgrades to the existing
ones.

I am considering converting the applications over to VB6 IF there are good
reasons to do so. I would appreciate advise from any gurus out there.

1. What are the advantages of using VB 6 over Office Developer for Outlook
Com-Addin development?

2. Does the Com-Addin DLL developed with VB provide better stability over
those developed with VBA.

3. I see that in VB6 I can import in the forms that I had developed with VBA
after setting a reference to MS Forms 2. The forms work fine without being
converted over to VB forms. Is there anything to be gained by converting the
actual forms from MS Forms 2.0 to VB forms?

4. Finally can VB.NET be used instead of VB6. I need to be able to support
Outlook 2000 onwards.

Thanks in advance.

Sanjay

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I prefer using VB 6 to Office Developer, it has a richer development
environment. Otherwise there should be no differences in the stability
of the DLL you create. MS Forms 2.0 controls are designed for use in
Outlook forms, and often don't work correctly when used in VB or in
VBA UserForms. I usually recommend using the proper VB/VBA controls.

It's far easier to create an addin using VB 6 than the dot net
languages if you intend to support multiple versions of Outlook. Many
things are much harder to do using dotnet and the PIA's and so on
required are not compatible from one version of Outlook to another.
Just develop on a machine with the oldest version of Outlook installed
that you are going to support. I usually develop on an Outlook 2000
machine so I can support Outlook 2000 and later.

 

[Sanjay Singh]

Thanks Ken

I have imported VBA Userforms to my VB project and they work fine (so far
anyway). Are there any known stability problems of leaving them as VBA user
forms.

By the way, two advantages I found of importing the exact same forms into VB
from VBA
-Altough they are still USerForms I can now set an icon for the form and I
have more choices when setting the Border type.

Thanks
Sanjay

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I usually prefer not to coerce a VBA UserForm as a VB form, but that's
up to you. Using the controls from MS Forms 2.0 in either would work
much of the time but in various cases it can bite you on the butt.
Your mileage might vary.