Macro conversion

[cwhaley]

I had to go back to 2002 in the archives here to find this question,
which is pretty much the same as mine...

Is there a way to convert the old Excel 4 macros to VB macros?

The answer then was, no, you have to re-write them. I'm wondering if
anything has happened in the last 5 years that would suggest another
possibility?

I have been using Excel since it was invented and when macros came
along I jumped in with both feet. A lot of my most useful workbooks
today are still full of them. And, editing them is trivial, since I
remember the language (and if I don't, I still have a manual). They're
just text in a worksheet. You just compose them and tell Excel where
to find them.

In short I really don't need to convert them, and will obviously
continue to write new ones the VB way, but am wondering if Microsoft
has dropped any hints that Excel 4 macros will no longer run in future
versions of Excel?

I would think that even if they did, they'd have to provide a
conversion tool? I'm sure I'm not the only one operating on the "if it
ain't broke, don't fix it" rule.

I can't prove this, but I believe that the old Excel 4 macro language
runs much faster than VB (probably because VB has so much overhead and
wasn't designed specifically for Excel, like the original macro
language was). Does anyone agree or take exception to that?

Also, with one past version of Excel, MS let Mac users use Real Basic
instead of VB. Is that still the case?
I think there's quite a bit of evidence that Real Basic is superior to
VB performance-wise; but, again, I don't have proof to offer without
doing some digging.

Apologies for another wordy series of questions, but I'm on the fence
re: this issue, and am looking for comments and suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

....Charles

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Is there a way to convert the old Excel 4 macros to VB macros?

The answer then was, no, you have to re-write them. I'm wondering if
anything has happened in the last 5 years that would suggest another
possibility?

No change.

In short I really don't need to convert them, and will obviously
continue to write new ones the VB way, but am wondering if Microsoft
has dropped any hints that Excel 4 macros will no longer run in future
versions of Excel?

Almost the opposite. The next version of MacOffice will not include any
VBA capability, but XL08 is expected to continue to run XL4M.

I would think that even if they did, they'd have to provide a
conversion tool? I'm sure I'm not the only one operating on the "if it
ain't broke, don't fix it" rule.

Some of us are scrambling to remember what we tried to forget years
ago...

I can't prove this, but I believe that the old Excel 4 macro language
runs much faster than VB (probably because VB has so much overhead and
wasn't designed specifically for Excel, like the original macro
language was). Does anyone agree or take exception to that?

XL4M, in my experience, is nearly always faster than VBA, both due to
VBA overhead, and to XL4Ms inherent use of optimized built-in XL
functions. In fact, when I get a section of VBA that's too slow, I
sometimes transfer the data to an XL sheet, perform the calcs in XL,
then recover the result.

An XL4M command to set the Page Setup options is orders of magnitude
faster than the equivalent VBA. Here's a VBA routine to execute an XL4M
command:

http://mcgimpsey.com/excel/udfs/pagesetup.html

Also, with one past version of Excel, MS let Mac users use Real Basic
instead of VB. Is that still the case?

The OLE hooks will still be there, so Real Basic and AppleScript will be
able to manipulate XL.

I think there's quite a bit of evidence that Real Basic is superior to
VB performance-wise; but, again, I don't have proof to offer without
doing some digging.

Don't know that I've ever seen a benchmark...