Excel 12 Blog – Request
I’m still enjoying David Gainer’s Excel 12 blog. Did everybody catch the screenshots of Excel 12’s new charting engine? Very nice..
I’d like to make a request, or offer a topic for a post you may get to someday: What’s up with programming in Excel 12?
This is the topic that caused the most interest prior to Excel 12 beta, and remains one of the least talked about topics still.
I need to know: Will the scroll mouse work in the Excel 12 Vba IDE? Lol.
Or, will code I write today work in Excel 123 ?
The most I’ve seen is this “Microsoft continues to state that VBA will be included in Office for many, many, more versions.”
Which would answer question 2, but knowing about the wheel mouse and other IDE upgrades could make for an interesting post, maybe.
VBA still works, man….
Thanks Jon, that’s what I though but was following up.
Did they make any changes to the IDE?
The IDE seems to be exactly the same, with a somewhat nicer looking toolbar but not updated to match the new Office menu system.
As for compatibility, I managed to get errors from simple code that worked in Excel 2000 and also ran much more complex code with no issues. That said, the complex code had error checking, error handling, etc, while the simple code was quick, dirty, and sloppy. Overall, if your code is robust enough I’m betting it works fine. But for the user who may have just tweaked a macro recorder routine I’d expect problems.
Not having poked around too much, I think the new menus are very nice and bring a lot to the forefront that was already in Excel that was probably unused due to being buried. You can still get to old dialog boxes if you’re comfortable that way. The one thing I am disappointed in with the new menus is keyboard control; it seems like if you don’t want to do everything with the mouse that you’re going to have to default to the old style menus.
Mark, I was hoping you’d be front and center on this. I need to know how to use Excel to script a file transfer from my TiVo to my PSP and post the results using XML online!
zfraile: I didn’t post how to Tivo->PSP->Excel->Xml->Online because I figured everyone was doing that already, didn’t they make this standard in Excel 12?
Thanks for the update on the ide, yeah some things from the past aren’t too robust so sorry about those folks luck I suppose.
I was hoping for a .net ide feel to the new Excel ide. Nothing specific it’s just more enjoyable to work their (the menu creator is very nice in .net for one example)
hummm…
Mark,
I’ve limited experience with the .net IDE. I remember it being much more intimidating and professional looking than the one from VB6. I also remember thinking it’d make an excellent excuse to get a dual monitor setup since the various views lended themselves so well to one coding window and one support window. Come to think of it, maybe a 3rd would give me a nice view of the procedure when I step through it. Um, oh, anyway, I lost track there. I had to go check my .net guide to see what you meant about the menu creater. That’d make the process of recoding my meticulously crafted (read: I don’t even know how it works anymore, but it must be good because it still does) utility add-in a lot less painful. The code still works, but the part where the command buttons are programatically added just doesn’t take. It might have something to do with there not being a commandbar to add them to…
Aside from your blog and the Daily Dose I don’t keep up much so I haven’t heard much feedback about the beta. I just had to mention the fact that the keyboard shortcuts have been all rearranged. You have to hit the Alt key to get them to appear, but once you do they’re very clear. They also seem to have a bit more logic and consistency behind the accelerator keys used than before. However, for someone who makes the finger motions for Alt-D, F, F or Alt-D, S, Enter, or Alt-D, V, Enter, Enter, Enter right in his sleep it is a bit jarring to say the least. There’s an attempt at a compatibility mode that is really designed for people like me because there’s no hint of the key at all; it’s just assumed you’ve memorized them already. I don’t know if I should feel like a freak for knowing them or feel like one for getting upset that I will no longer need them.
Excel lends itself nicely to dual monitors also, IDE in left, Excel in right. An 80$ card and 15$ goodwill monitor and I love it.
I actually don’t have a copy of the beta.
Personally just feel more comfortable in the .Net Ide, though I hardly ever use it…
Your first response summed it up well, most of my code should still work.
And nobody has answered the most important question: whether the scroll mouse works in Office 12?
The IDE is exactly the same. That is, when you go to Help -> About, the form says “Microsoft Visual Basic 6.4, Version 1001, VBA: Retail 6.5.1001, Form3: 12.0.3417″, just as it does in Excel 2000. Score 1 for abandonware there.
Oh well, at least the object model was updated.
I’m not an experienced beta tester, but I thought the idea behind it was that the feature set was complete and it was just end-stage bug fixing and compatibility testing. If there were an updated IDE I would’ve expected to see it already.
I guess it’s time to get my head out of the sand and start learning some new tricks before I become the guy in the back cube relying on compatibility mode to run old Lotus key macros. There are a lot of neat tools built in, many of which are not new to this version (Infopath, XML, SmartTags), that have a lot of potential that has been mostly neglected.
“The IDE is exactly the same.” Very lame. Must fall into the “buy vsto” marketing scheme.
The only thing holding smart tags back is you can’t run a macro from them without jumping through 100 hurdles. I’m sure they didn’t, but smart tags with macro support would be awesome.
I think I read they are holding some features back, the vba ide is probably not one though.
I think that the likelyhood of them updateing the IU is remote, given that VB is now unsupport? You wouldn’t put a new body on a car that you’ll bin if the engine blows?!?
Mark you use VB scroll though?
Ross, I have a wheel mouse. In the VBA editor this doesn’t work without hacking it.
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.