Making VBA project to .exe?

[Nicholas Gravagne]

Hello All,

A standard VB project can be made into a standalone .exe app distributable
to anyone, even if it contains an Access .mdb file. Is this possible with
VBA? For example, I would like to take advantage of the power of Excel to
write a program, but wonder if I could then make the program as an
independent app and distribute it to end-users who don't have Excel on their
computers.

My research has not yet confirmed this one way or the other. And, although
not a VBA question, does anyone have a suggestion on perhaps another
database S/W program (such as dBASE) that would allow me to accomplish the
same goal?

Thanks for your expertise and your time.

Nick

 

[Tony Jollans]

No, you can't do it.

VBA needs its parent application and it is that parent that allows you to
save, or not save, as an exe (and provides all the necessary components for
the exe to work). When VB is the parent, it gives you that option; when
Excel is the parent, it doesn't. Access, I suppose, goes some way towards it
when you make an MDE.

 

[Nicholas Gravagne]

Thanks Tony

No, you can't do it.

VBA needs its parent application and it is that parent that allows you to
save, or not save, as an exe (and provides all the necessary components
for the exe to work). When VB is the parent, it gives you that option;
when Excel is the parent, it doesn't. Access, I suppose, goes some way
towards it when you make an MDE.

 

[Tony Aidinis]

Indeed, VBA needs its parent Excel to work.

However, Excel and VBA are such a wonderful combination to quickly build and
test applications because, thanks to the power of Excel, one can build user
interfases complete with data entry and graphs without writting ANY code.

You can concentrate on data manipulation in your code and leave all user
interface tasks to excel. All I do is read / write to cells using
..Select.Worksheet(name) and .cell.(x,y) references.

My question then is: can I take the VBA code I created within Excel
environment and transfer that to .net visual studio IDE, building the windows
and controls as necessary to still make use of the .Select.Worksheet etc
references?

Forgive my lack of knowledge. I am an amateur programmer but I expect in
todays sophisticated environments to be able to get productivity tools that
could make it easy to reuse existing code and help define windows and
controls without the need of writing too much code.

Can anyone point out such tools?

Many thanks,