How long have macros been available in Excel?

[Guest]

Macros are new to me... I am learning about them now, how long have they been
available in Excel?
Thanks so much

 

[JE McGimpsey]

IIRC they were introduced in XL 4 in 1992. Those macros used a language
called Excel 4 Macro language, and were similar to recording actions in
the UI.

XL5 (ca. 1993) included VBA, which is the current macro language, which,
while UI actions can be recorded, is much more of a true programming
language.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't know the answer to this:

Was there a version of excel that supported the lotus-123 style macros before
XL4 came out? I would have guessed that MS would have made xl run 123 macros
very early.

And for the OP, John Walkenbach has some excel history at:
http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/index.htm
(but not much help for your specific question)

 

[Jon Peltier]

Dave -

This sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I switched to Excel 4 one week after using
Excel for the first time. I was the only person in my department for a couple years
after that who used Excel or Word (having come to the PC from a Mac, but please
don't tell anyone). Everyone else used 1-2-3 and WordPerfect on their PCs, and I
couldn't understand how they could get anything done with those packages.

Back on topic: I have a Que book on Excel 5, which covers both XLM and VBA. This VBA
is not quite the VBA we've been using since Excel 97, but it's close. The book makes
no mention of supporting 1-2-3 macros. Given MS's behavior of supporting older
capabilities for a few generations, I would have expected some acknowledgment of
them if they were supported by Excel's earlier editions.

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