Using VBA on Mac...

[Steve Rowe]

Hi,

I am trying to use VBA on the Mac and cannot find any easy way to view
current object or even variable values in the debugger. Using print from the
immediate window is all I have found. Am I missing something?

Steve

 

[David J. Braden]

Steve,
I'm afraid you aren't. It's also an older version of VBA than what we
have in Windows.
Sorry for the bad news.
David Braden
MVP

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

But clearly, MS doesn't feel like providing Mac users the same level of
features or support as Windows users.

I hate to sound like an MS apologist - I'm generally not, but that
characterization is a little unfair. MS doesn't "feel" anything -
it's a business. If 100,000 Mac Office users demanded a better VBE
and indicated they'd pay for it in an upgrade, I'm sure it would
become a high priority.

With a smaller market share, however, the MacBu has to triage its
development priorities. Freebies, where they can essentially port
the code intact from the Win side, are easier to work, obviously.
Adapting technologies that depend on ActiveX or other Windows-only
technologies slide a bit down the scale.

And, MacBu isn't just a clone shop - it's actively targeting its
development toward *their* customer, the Mac Office user (that's why
it's so vitally important to let them know via Feedback what you
want to see). I suspect VBA development comes way down on the list
(as a cross-platform developer, I seem to be more the exception than
the rule...). Especially now that VBA is a dying language.

OTOH, MacBu has pioneered some user-interface technologies that are
just now crossing over to Windows that have had Win counterparts
drooling...

And all of this while Apple has been fiddle-farting around with the
OS in fundamental ways.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

And, MacBu isn't just a clone shop - it's actively targeting its
development toward *their* customer, the Mac Office user (that's why
it's so vitally important to let them know via Feedback what you
want to see). I suspect VBA development comes way down on the list
(as a cross-platform developer, I seem to be more the exception than
the rule...). Especially now that VBA is a dying language.

OTOH, MacBu has pioneered some user-interface technologies that are
just now crossing over to Windows that have had Win counterparts
drooling...

Well, in that case, if someone could suggest to them they improve the
endnote feature, it might be a good idea. I'll send a feedback request, but
also lay out my reasoning in case someone wants to pass it on, or send their
own feedback request reinforcing mine:

Endnotes may sound like a nitpicky academic problem, but if the academic
market were so worthless, there wouldn't be two bibliographic software
programs constantly producing updates (EndNote and Reference Manager), plus
an academic word processor (NotaBene) which sounds like something I would
buy if it were available for Mac (and the MacBU may want to check out its
features, if interested in this direction for development). Endnotes are
just the most visible manifestation of how Office overlooks academic needs,
but I could probably come up with more if I thought about it. (Technical
writers and corporate reports also use endnotes, of course).

Targeting the academic market may be a viable direction, b/c my totally
unscientific impression is that the academic world has proportionately more
Mac users than the corporate world, and more university IT departments are
still supporting Mac users than corporation ones. Even my very PC campus
has a few macs in every computer lab, and there are still some Mac campuses
out there. Plus, academics are proselytizing-type people who share computer
problems, and having a core of people out there (standing in front of
students) who know that their Mac is better for writing research papers than
a PC could be good business, especially if Office continues to be slower on
OS X. At this point, I am advising academic PC users *not* to switch to X
because I've read on the NGs that it is very slow with long documents, and
I'm not upgrading until they fix it. So some improvement in
academic-oriented features could counteract that flaw. Academics exchange
documents so much that Office is a necessity--the Mac BU could make it a
pleasure instead.

Dayo

PS. Actual endnote issues (the feedback I composed a while ago in a fit of
pique and eventually will send):

Can programmers please consider making some changes to the way Footnotes and
Endnotes are formatted?

Most importantly, please establish a different style for Footnote/Endnote
Reference (in the Text) and Footnote/Endnote Reference (in the Note).
Everyone always wants the reference numbers in the text to be shrunk and
superscripted, but often people want the reference number in the note to be
in the same size text as the rest of the note, and it requires a lot of
manipulation to achieve the desired effect. Two different styles would make
it a lot easier.

This is especially true for Endnotes--if you look at some books, you will
notice that Endnotes and Footnotes are *not* just the same thing in a
different location, they actually have major formatting changes that again,
Word makes more difficult to fix than it should be. A dialog box for
Endnote options that allows me to just check two boxes to suppress all note
separators and put Endnotes in their own section would be great. Then I
could put that Endnote section wherever I wanted to--for instance, having
all notes at the end of a book but before the Bibliography and Index is very
common.

Many people write multi-chapter books in Word. They restart the Endnotes at
each section, as is standard, but then Word prints them all at the end,
producing a ton of notes with running numbers that randomly restart at 1
every so often. Obviously, people want to separate each sections' worth of
notes with a heading, and Word could make that task much easier. A dialog
box with the option to divide endnotes by section, or keep them all in one
section, would allow inserting headings that a TOC can pick up, and creating
a header that says "Notes to Chapter Two," etc, etc.

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

Most importantly, please establish a different style for Footnote/Endnote
Reference (in the Text) and Footnote/Endnote Reference (in the Note).
Everyone always wants the reference numbers in the text to be shrunk and
superscripted, but often people want the reference number in the note to be
in the same size text as the rest of the note, and it requires a lot of
manipulation to achieve the desired effect. Two different styles would make
it a lot easier.

I would definitely suggest that. I wonder, though, if that wouldn't
be more confusing to those who expect the footnote reference styles
to be the same (like me).

In any case, you can always define a new style and apply it to
either the reference in the body or the reference in the footnote.

This is especially true for Endnotes--if you look at some books, you will
notice that Endnotes and Footnotes are *not* just the same thing in a
different location, they actually have major formatting changes that again,
Word makes more difficult to fix than it should be. A dialog box for
Endnote options that allows me to just check two boxes to suppress all note
separators and put Endnotes in their own section would be great. Then I
could put that Endnote section wherever I wanted to--for instance, having
all notes at the end of a book but before the Bibliography and Index is very
common.

I'm not sure why doing format changes is "more difficult to fix than
it should be". Can't you just define/modify the styles to get what
you want?

I like the idea of being able to put end notes in their own section
before the bibliography and index.

Be sure to check out the microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs
newsgroup - if you check out their archives, you may find ways to do
what you're looking for.

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

Well, in that case, if someone could suggest to them they improve the
endnote feature, it might be a good idea. I'll send a feedback request, but
also lay out my reasoning in case someone wants to pass it on, or send their
own feedback request reinforcing mine:

I know that's been a WinWord MVPs feature request for years...

I suspect the delay/lack of implementation is not for lack of
desire, but more from utter complexity of the underlying code - I
don't know what such changes would break. But it could just be
inertia, I suppose.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Feel free to skip to the end for the philosophical response, as opposed to
the play by play on the nitty-gritty of Word...

I would definitely suggest that. I wonder, though, if that wouldn't
be more confusing to those who expect the footnote reference styles
to be the same (like me).

Two styles, one based on the other by default, with clearly explanatory
titles and probably no one who didn't want to use two different styles would
ever even notice. Anyone who knows styles enough to find this a problem
would find it very easy to work around, while working around the single
style is complex.

In any case, you can always define a new style and apply it to
either the reference in the body or the reference in the footnote.

Manually apply a style to over 2000 footnotes (in my case)? Having to
carefully select only the number? Very slow, cumbersome, and not so
functional. Though I haven't tried doing a Find/Replace only in the
footnote level. I don't have this problem myself, but enough other people
complain that there exists an MVP FAQ on it. I'm not entirely sure that
changing the style of the reference number won't mess up the automatic
numbering and renumbering of notes.

I'm not sure why doing format changes is "more difficult to fix than
it should be". Can't you just define/modify the styles to get what
you want?

Redefining the styles works fine, and produces text that looks right. But
last time I did this, I had to enter each section and manually delete the
note continuation separator, b/c every time an endnote continued to the next
page, Word put in the separator, so I had a black line running across the
top of almost every notes page. A prime example of treating endnotes just
like footnotes, completely inappropriately. And that is just sloppy
programming and goal-setting--nobody put any thought into what endnotes are
before writing the code.

Section formatting in general is more difficult than it needs to be.
Formatting multi-section documents seems to require me manually moving from
section to section, repeatedly unchecking "same as previous" for each one,
repeatedly checking "suppress endnotes" as desired for several sections, and
various other repetitive actions which shouldn't be necessary in a program
as powerful as Word. For instance, if I don't check "Different First Page"
*before* I uncheck "same as previous", I have to do all those manually too.
It also lends itself to mistakes and confusion because although the cursor
has to change sections, the dialog boxes don't reflect where I am or what
section I am changing. A dialog to set section defaults as desired ("same
as previous", "different first page", "suppress endnotes") would save a fair
amount of trouble and minimize manual changes. We sort of already have that
in Document Layout, but I am pretty sure if you have already created a
multi-section document, it only formats one section at a time.

These are things that only affect a small portion of the user population,
but that probably would never have arisen, had developers or beta testers
been doing the sorts of things I and every other grad student/professor use
Word to do (or try to, those less experienced just give up).

I like the idea of being able to put end notes in their own section
before the bibliography and index.

Yeah, Word 2001 and 2002 enable a workaround (endnotes at end of section,
suppress endnotes for all sections but one), but it is somewhat cumbersome,
and took several versions to come out.

Be sure to check out the microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs
newsgroup - if you check out their archives, you may find ways to do
what you're looking for.

I do keep an eye on that NG, and I've pretty much solved my problems, mainly
by not using endnotes which I don't like anyhow. But these issues with
notes exist for a number of people, so consistently that the fixes should be
features rather than complicated workarounds, and had the software been
developed with academic users in mind as well as corporate, I doubt these
problems would exist. They aren't crucial, and I can see why they haven't
been fixed, but if the MacBU wanted to target the academic market, these are
the sorts of user-friendly additions that would make good selling points,
and wouldn't necessarily take a lot to implement. Dialog boxes that do
automatically what one can do manually shouldn't break too much code, but do
enable marketers to proclaim "we are paying attention to the needs of our
academic users!" Executing the workarounds is not that bad, but having to do
it is a constant reminder that my needs are simply not important to the
software maker.

Which is why I only brought this up when you said MacBU is not just a clone,
b/c from my point of view, here is a niche begging for someone to fill it.

The "suppress endnotes" command which saves tons of trouble (enabling
endnotes before index) actually seems to have originated with Word 2001,
making me wonder if the MacBU is already alive to some of this. I don't use
X, so it's hard to tell.

Dayo