In the first four parts of this series, we've focused on VBA for Word and Excel. Those two environments are both very widely used and also represent a pretty standard or "vanilla" hosting environment. In this segment, we're going to take a look at several different hosting environments and then develop an an example application in one that is sort of "different" - Access.

  So ... Let's go into the wider world of VBA and see what else you can do.

As mentioned in the Introduction, this article is based on VBA 6 level applications because that's what most of our readers are using.

It wasn't always this way. A few Microsoft applications have been very late to the VBA party. Outlook 97 and 98, in fact only supported VBscript, not VBA. VBA finally appeared in Outlook 2000 late in the beta testing cycle. Visio was the first "outside" software product to include VBA in 1997 (MS bought Visio a few years after that). Today there are hundreds of Microsoft VBA licensees.

A few examples:

From the Adaptive Accounting page (www.adaptiveaccounting.com):

Accounting Office speaks the same language as Microsoft Office - VBA, which means that systems integrators can build complete customized solutions, linking desktop workflow to back end accounts to provide a total solution.

From the AutoCAD page (usa.autodesk.com):

The combination of the powerful ActiveX Automation Object model in AutoCAD and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) presents a compelling framework for customizing AutoCAD.

From the Virtual Office 2000 page (www.computerwelt.de):

Die optimale Kompatibilität mit den Microsoft Office-Anwendungen gewährleistet höchste Flexibilität hinsichtlich Funktionalität und individuellem Bedarf. Denn auf der Basis von Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) passen Sie VirtualOffice 2000 individuell Ihren Anforderungen an.

Just wanted to make sure you were still paying attention ... and to demonstrate that VBA's appeal is truely world-wide. Here's an illustration from the Iconics GraphWorX page. The point is ... it looks a lot like the editor in Word, Excel, or any Office application.

Learn VBA once. Program the world!

This series is based on the Windows 2000/Office 2000/VBA 6.0 level of technology, and Microsoft has not upgraded VBA substantially beyond that since it was released in 1999. The move to a .NET version of VBA is coming, but it's just not clear how long it will take - or what it will look like (as of March 2003). Microsoft is "feeling the heat" about the serious problems people are having upgrading from VB 6 to VB .NET and they're not likely to put their "cash cow" - Office - at risk with the same kind of problems and the less forgiving customers who are not professional programmers.

If you're considering adding VBA to your system - not just writing VBA applications as we're doing here, but making VBA the development environment for an entire system as the companies above have done - then you will want to download (or, probably better, purchase the CD) the software development kit (SDK) version 6.3 from Microsoft. If you're just planning on getting the most from a mature, productive programming environment, you can't beat VBA for broad coverage, compatibility, and a thoroughly tested technology base.