Dilettante Question: VBA to VB.Net?

[sbmack7]

I program, but I am not a programmer. Please forgive me if this
question is simplistic or naïve. I am thinking of transitioning from
VBA to VB.net. However, since VBA is tightly bound to Excel the
development process is very efficient because I can quickly iterate
back and forth between a worksheet and the design space to converge on
the solution.

I downloaded Visual Studio .Net Express as a starting point. But it
is not clear to me that there is an equivalent way to lash up VB.net
to Excel. Can somebody point me to some documentation that explains
if and how that can be done? And while you are at it, is it worth the
effort?

Thanks Much,

SteveM

 

[JLGWhiz]

You might get some infor here:

http://www.vbdotnetheaven.com/Uploa...adsheet04182005093012AM/ExcelSpreadsheet.aspx

 

[SteveM]

You might get some infor here:

http://www.vbdotnetheaven.com/UploadFile/ggaganesh/ExcelSpreadsheet04...

You gotta be kidding me!

But thanks...

 

[Jon Peltier]

Before you embark on such a journey, you have to ask yourself what you hope
to gain, and what you hope not to lose, by switching.

VB.Net can certainly be used to automate Excel, but as you say, it is not
linked in the same way to Excel as is VBA; in fact there is some kind of PIA
required, or a shim, or some such. There is a certain overhead required for
any VB.Net project that is not needed in VBA because of the linkage. A VBA
solution is as easy as one workbook that contains some VBA code. A VB.Net
requires an assembly to accompany the Excel parts. A VBA solution can be
deployed as simply as emailing a workbook. A VB.net-based Office solution,
well, suffice to say that programmers have reported problems with this kind
of solution.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______


I program, but I am not a programmer. Please forgive me if this
question is simplistic or naïve. I am thinking of transitioning from
VBA to VB.net. However, since VBA is tightly bound to Excel the
development process is very efficient because I can quickly iterate
back and forth between a worksheet and the design space to converge on
the solution.

I downloaded Visual Studio .Net Express as a starting point. But it
is not clear to me that there is an equivalent way to lash up VB.net
to Excel. Can somebody point me to some documentation that explains
if and how that can be done? And while you are at it, is it worth the
effort?

Thanks Much,

SteveM

 

[Peter T]

There is a certain overhead required for

any VB.Net project that is not needed in VBA because of the linkage.
A VB.Net requires an assembly to accompany the Excel parts.

Any pre Win XP OS user (eg Win 2000) might need to download and install the
32Mb Framework (the older v2.0).

Regards,
Peter T

 

[SteveM]

Any pre Win XP OS user (eg Win 2000) might need to download and install the
32Mb Framework (the older v2.0).

Regards,
Peter T

I sincerely appreciate the advice from all of the guys here. Let me
close this thread with an editorial rant. Recently my stars became
dysfunctionally aligned and I had to immerse myself in many things
Microsoft. The universal observation I can make about the product
suite is that every application is half-baked. (Or as my dear
departed dad would say, "half-assed".)

I recently installed Office 2007 Professional Edition. What a can of
worms I opened. I am running it on XP but it still runs like a
bloated leviathan. And the fact that there isn't commonality among
the interfaces of the different applications is ridiculous. Why are
there fonts available in PowerPoint but not Word? How come the
Outlook is half 2003 and half 2007? Why is Microsoft pushing Visual
Studio but not bothering to do the replacement integration of Studio
for VBA?

My version of Office came with a copy of the Microsoft Groove product,
which looked to be a really interesting application for a small
consulting practice like I have. In fact that's Microsoft's target
market for the product, families and small business to facilitate
collaboration. But after I install that additional memory hog, I see
that it comes with essentially no templates and everything that I
would want to do, I have to develop from scratch. A search of the web
space for Groove users surfaces all of these developers writing
complex code in Studio and Silver Light to insert the functionality
that should have been there in the first place. I can write code, but
I would use a product like Groove so I wouldn't have to write code!

The next wildly corpulent Microsoft application I had the stupidity to
install was Expression Web. Because I wanted to build a website for
my business. And why Expression Web? Because little did I know that
the Office 2007 install would zotz my copy of Frontline. So I
download the 700 MB msi file and do the install yielding an
application that has just chewed up 1.1 GB of my hard drive. 1.1 GB
to modify a webpage template! I subsequently downloaded a open-source
webpage editor called Kompozer that does what I need to do. 20 MB -
and free. And I found an open source collaborative platform called
Moodle that is free and has developers porting all kinds of plug-ins.
Why doesn't someone just put a bullet through Groove's head and have
the programmers spruce up Moodle whose fundamental functionality is
already there?

And lastly, my tar baby relationship with Microsoft applications often
takes me to their website. And I find all kinds of help pages with
arcane examples written by geeks for geeks. To say nothing of the
myriad web obsolete pages and countless links to nowhere.

If I could go back in time, I would do three things for sure. Kill
Hitler, save the dinosaurs, and run Bill Gates over with a bus.

SteveM