Microsoft Says VBA Is Here To Stay

Angostura writes "Microsoft's team blog for Microsoft Excel and Excel Services has responded with a denial to the earlier report that Visual Basic for Applications will disappear from Windows Office in 2009. The Slashdot discussion on the report on Tuesday got pretty animated."

Comments

So Microsoft is at least still a *little* evil

[sapone]

If they had they rid the world of VBA on top of publishing their binary specs in an Open Source compatible way, their reputation bar might have ended up on the "good guy" side :).

Re:So Microsoft is at least still a *little* evil

[Anonymous Coward]

And if it's true that VBA is sticking around, then the folks running the Mac BU are liars. Either way, Microsoft can't be trusted.

Re:So Microsoft is at least still a *little* evil

[kestasjk]

There's no way they were going to release an Office suite without any macro capability, but the blow is that they aren't replacing it with .NET .

Re:So Microsoft is at least still a *little* evil

[smittyoneeach]

Not necessarily. If the main VBA users are the PC-based ones, then MS could drop Mac support, retain PC, and the story is "reasonably" clear.
In any case, with the number of people involved in frobnicating the decision, there really isn't a need to label anyone a liar. Policies are variables, not constants, and get new values assigned to them frequently during business execution.

Re:So Microsoft is at least still a *little* evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with big banks on the fixed income side, and most traders have some excel spreadsheets with custom macros developed by internal IT. MS has to keep new version backward compatible. There is no way MS will break these spreadsheets, or else they'll piss off plenty of rich people and big companies.

Re:So Microsoft is at least still a *little* evil

[rtb61]

Now that is an utter and total lie. M$ will with out any qualms or favour break every macro in every spreadsheet in they believe it will make them money and they have already done it once. I likeed the simple little macro language that cam with every spreadsheet program, sure there were some differences but it basically followed the same logic as the spreadsheet program itself.

Then the asshats at M$ wanted to make more money selling software licences for Bills baby, VBA, so fuck all the customers using spreadsheet macros, we will force them to change to VBA by dropping support for spreadsheet macros, and buy an additional software licence if they wanted the full program and the manual, at the same time we will use our monopoly to try to force every other company to incorporate a M$ VBA macro licence in their programs as well.

So will M$ fuck over the customer, in a heart beat.

that was a close one.

[kellyb9]

Oh thank god... don't know what I'd do without that!

ISOfication of OOXML vs VBA

[jkrise]

If OOXML is to become an ISO standard fully implemented in Office 2009; VBA and binary blobs will have to be deprecated and removed from the feature list.

Else, after ISO approval is sought and obtained, MS might claim it is deprecated but still provide support in Office..... either way, confused times ahead for the Office cash cow, methinks.

Re:ISOfication of OOXML vs VBA

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. VBA obviously can't be part of the ISO-ificated OOXML. VBA is probably going to be considered a 'legacy' feature, with recommendations that customers do new development on VSTA/VSTO.

If history is any judge, many VBA apps will one day not work in future versions of Office anyhow. MSFT does plenty to break compatibility between releases. In fact, some VBA apps developed for Office 97 won't work on Office 2000 or later.

Re:ISOfication of OOXML vs VBA

[ozmanjusri]

If history is any judge, many VBA apps will one day not work in future versions of Office anyhow.

Actually, that should happen sooner rather than later, so this announcement is a retrograde step.

DDE, OLE, COM and DCOM are fundamentally flawed models which were developed in a much less fraught security environment than we have now. VBA is heavily tied into that same flawed architecture.

Microsoft has tried to address the exposures by disabling macros by default in Office, but the control they provide isn't fine-grained enough to do more than pass the buck to the customers who have to enable the lower security levels to get their documents working.

They do have an answer in .NET, but until Office is re-written for that platform, and until there's some sort of converter for the massive collection of existing VBA to VBA.NET, they're stuck with the risky and clunky security fix.

Re:ISOfication of OOXML vs VBA

[MightyYar]

I've got no problem with them revamping VBA and breaking things here and there to make everything more robust. I'd much rather fix existing macros than start from scratch.

We're smarter now and we typically make web apps, but when Excel 5.0 (IIRC) came out with VBA, it was like geek crack. We made so many VBA macros that it seems like that was all I did for a few years. Now, practically our whole measurement lab relies on VBA in some way or another. It would be quite a bit of work to re-write all of those little macros.

Of course,MS is catering to their real customers

[Coopjust]

And despite the security problems that have plagued users for years due to VBA viruses, Microsoft won't remove VBA from Office.

Interestingly enough:...

While it's true that VBA isn't supported in the latest version of Office for the Mac and the VBA licensing program did close to new customers last year, we have no plans to remove VBA from future versions of Office for Windows

Looks like MS may be crippling the Mac version to stop enterprises from moving on from Windows.

Cue the Yack-son 5

[smittyoneeach]

V - B - A
Easy as one, two, thray,
Do arrays the mangled way,
Rather Python any day,
Market penetration means you stay,
OK, this post is turni--

That's not the problem

[Apocalypse111]

Customers don't want VBA to go away.

They want the damn ribbon to go away!

Re:That's not the problem

[ChefInnocent]

I don't know why you were modded 'Troll'. I think your statements are accurate. There are way too many lines of VB code written for businesses to want it to go away. If they had to re-write those lines (no matter what new language will be, or what the quality of the VB is), they would more likely abandon the need to upgrade. As for the ribbon, I haven't seen it, but that might be because my company didn't think it was necessary to upgrade to the current version of Office.

Whether we like it or not VB is here to stay. The cost to convert the older stuff is way too high.

VBA for Mac

[christurkel]

VBA for Office Mac was dropped because AppleScript is far more powerful for the task and by dropping VBA you hinder cross platform compatibility. Devious.

Would have been a mixed blessing

[HangingChad]

I absolutely hate VBA but it's conflicted because I've made so much money untangling some spaghetti coded VBA nightmare cobbled together as a spare time project that became a legacy application no one can live without.

Hate the language, love the money from fixing it.

Actually, no. Did you RTFA before submitting?

[BobMcD]

The link that _I_ clicked took me to a blog that said that VBA was no longer supported, and that the licensing program had gone away. To me this means 'dead'. No support and no license means that no reputable vendor is going to nail any new shingles to this product. Any future offerings using VBA are destined to be either snakeoil or shareware.

Am I missing something here?

Re:Actually, no. Did you RTFA before submitting?

[HiredMan]

VBA is gone from Office for the Mac and VBA developers is closed. Microsoft is acknowledging that both these "clues" that made people conclude that VBA in Office was going away are true - but they contend that VBA in Office is not going away.

"The facts you cited are right - but your logical conclusion was wrong. We're Microsoft and we are not bound by logic."

Basically.

=tkk

Re:Actually, no. Did you RTFA before submitting?

[Richard_at_work]

The entire article is thus -

Following MacWorld earlier this week, there has been some inaccurate information circulating online regarding VBA support in Office for Windows. While it's true that VBA isn't supported in the latest version of Office for the Mac and the VBA licensing program did close to new customers last year, we have no plans to remove VBA from future versions of Office for Windows. We understand that VBA is a critical capability for large numbers of our customers; accordingly, there is no plan to remove VBA from future versions of Excel.

Point by point:

1. VBA isn't supported in the latest Office for Mac
2. VBA isn't being licensed for third party inclusions anymore
3. There are no plans to remove VBA from future versions of Office for Windows
4. No plan to remove VBA from future versions of Excel

So, its not supported for Mac, and new developers cannot include it in their products, but it will remain supported in Office for Windows apps. Not sure what blog you were reading!

How about using .Net?

[mallardtheduck]

What I would like to see would be a .net based macro system in Office. Something where we could write macros in VB, C#, Python, or any other CLR language.

Since .Net has built-in support for different trust levels, code signing, etc., security should be more manageable.

Most of the work is in fact already done. The Microsoft.Office.* hierarchy already exists in .Net, all that is really needed is a way to embed .Net code in MS Office documents.

Re:How about using .Net?

[Shados]

It won't be long... I mean, SSIS's script components already use VB.NET (and in the next version can use more languages), so the scaffold is already there.

Re:How about using .Net?

[andy9701]

Isn't that what Visual Studio Tools for Office does? I've never really looked into it much, but my understanding was that it was a .NET replacement for writing Office apps with VBA.

Re:Why bother?

[sconeu]

That's fine with MS. You have to buy a Windows license to do that.

Still...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Still, even if they keep in in Windows Office, there's no question that it's gone in Mac Office 2008, and that's a huge monkey wrench in mixed business environments. While I'm sure that the Microsoft "solution" is to just have you dual-boot into Vista when you need to run VBA on your Mac, this seems to clearly be an attack on Apple's recent success, and could be a deal-breaker in a significant number of environments.

Or Mac users could refuse en masse to "upgrade" to this "downgrade".

Re:Mac users only eh?

[cnettel]

VBA relies on COM and parts of the original (up to VB6) VB engine to do its job. The Mac layer was based on a COM implementation on Mac. To continue the licensing scheme, they would have to maintain the complete library and eventually port it to 64-bitness. Just keeping the bits needed for Office can be simpler. At least, they won't have to maintain an external-product quality interface to the host application developers anymore. VBA support in a future Office release might be done through process separation and a separate thunking layer (moving all the COM servers out of the actual process and making those talk to the actual Office applications through the new API), or translation on the fly to a new environment. Keeping support doesn't have to mean that the current environment really stays there.

Re:Of course,MS is catering to their real customer

[samkass]

Looks like MS may be crippling the Mac version to stop enterprises from moving on from Windows.

Vista needs some competitive advantage over MacOS X, I guess. Since OpenOffice supports it, though, I suspect most Mac users would rather give up MS Office than MacOS when possible. Considering the Mac is growing 2-3x the industry rate, tying Office to Windows in this manner is just Microsoft nailing one more nail in their own coffin.

Re:Oh well.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

...which is great until they want to share a document w/ macros with someone on Windows...

Boggled

[samael]

Has anyone actually read the original explanation for why Office 2008 isn't getting VBA?

http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/

Which makes it very clear that there are good technological reasons for dropping it. Or, at least, it's going to be such a huge amount of work to bring it natively to Intel that it's not worth it to MS.

I mean, sure, some people at MS may be happy about it vanishing, but it doesn't sound like a conspiracy to me...

Re:Boggled

[SpaceHamster]

Which makes it very clear that there are good technological reasons for dropping it. Horseshit. His post says, at great length, that they didn't want to write a whole new jitter for the mac-intel platform. Fine, sounds tough. Wouldn't interpreting the VBA opcodes be worlds easier (and more future-proof)? Or just running the good ole legacy vba engine under a mac-ppc emulator?

The real problem is that the company has lost its consumer market lock-in and is desperate to staunch Apple uptake in the enterprise, and removing VBA support is as close to a guaranteed deal breaker as they'll ever get.

My thoughts in lyrical form

[Philotechnia]

Sung to the tune of "Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA
(If you don't know, now you know)


VBA
So many people writing code in vain
VBA
Debugging apps is really quite a pain

VBA
Microsoft says it will not support
VBA
To C#, functionality we'll port

VBA
No rhyme or reason to deploy this mess
VBA
A seasoned coder really could care less

VBA
Slashdot will flame Microsoft either way
VBA
Now I'm confused why it is here to stay

May Deny But Intentions Are Clear

[littlewink]

VBScript is the core language of VBA and was the only extant language omitted with the release of .NET. Microsoft's language development groups didn't want to support the language - classic VB and VBA were held to be hacks. So it was proposed that VB/VBA be killed.

In a most unusual display of synchronicity, Microsoft's marketing group also wanted VBScript killed because:

• it was a "free language" - VBScript & ASP enabled web development in Notepad - selling Visual Studio development tools was next to impossible with a free and simple alternative available.
• a belief that millions of VBScript/ASP developers using Notepad would buy into the new .NET development environment tools. That is, greed.

What instead happened is that the millions of VB and ASP developers, seeing their toolkits and production code abandoned and marginalized by Microsoft, abandoned IIS, ASP and VB en masse.

Today .NET is on life-support: half a decade after the release of .NET there remain more .ASP pages on the WWW than .ASPX. Microsoft's latest release of .NET development tools presents the enterprise buyer with a more confounding variety of labels, choices and courses than has been available since the height of IBM's enterprise supremacy, none of them any better than their earlier products Notepad and VB.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[Foerstner]

Or, at least, it's going to be such a huge amount of work to bring it natively to Intel that it's not worth it to MS.

At one time in the past, Microsoft considered it worthwhile to port VBA from Intel and Win32 to PowerPC and the Classic Mac Toolbox.

Today, it's too much effort to either 1) update the existing VBA engine or 2. Replicate the previous clean-sheet effort. Despite the fact that the Mac is growing in market share, and Office sales are very healthy--something that could hardly be said back in the late '90s when VBA was brought over.

I assure you, moving VBA from Win32+x86 to Classic Toolbox + PPC was a much bigger technical challenge than it would be to do the same on the modern Mac architecture. There is only one reason why Microsoft is no longer willing to do so. VBA is established and is ready to serve its purpose as a mechanism of lock-in.

That would be suicidal in Excel case.

[jacekm]

VBA in Excel case is a major advantage Excel has over most competitors. For many engineers capability to write custom programs using popular programming language within the spreadsheet makes Excel the spreadsheet of choice that has no viable competition. This drives rest of the company and cooperating suppliers into the MS Office as a standard. Dropping VBA would be in case of Excel poor decision. Such spreadsheet would lose support it has between technical professionals today. On the other hand I haven't seen much use of VBA in the rest of the MS Office applications. JAM

VBA Went Too Far

[cjb110]

Personally I think VBA went too far, it wasn't a simple macro language.

Which meant it was ripe for abuse and overuse. Too many companies have important, business critical functions/logic entombed in Excel 'macros', or Access 'applications'.

If I've understood MS's intentions, they want all office programming to be done within .net, which is fine. But I think they should then 'freely' distribute an Office specific version of say C# Express. I can't see many customers being happy if they forced to also buy full Visual Studio versions if they want to convert their Excel/Access apps, esp not the SMB's.