I downloaded the Mini Calendar and Date Picker add-in from the Microsoft store and I would like to change a little bit of its functionality in VBA but cant seem to locate the add-in file anywhere . I activated the add-in and it works but it doesn't appear in the Active Application add-ins window under options so I don't know how to locate it. How can I go about this?
This is mentioned in the comments, but I'll officially answer as it's a common misconception that all Excel ADD-INS are written in VBA with an xlam file (particularly amongst financial Excel people who have just learned to write in VBA).
No. You cannot edit the code. It is not written in VBA and there is no xlam file, only a DLL file, which is much harder to interpret.
More "serious" add-ins, such as those found in Windows store, or are released by major software providers (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft) write their add-ins with C+, JavaScript or VB.Net. There's colossally more coding libraries in these languages than VBA, and the output of a DLL file makes it much harder for people to "steal" their code (as the OP intended to do, even if in a harmless nature).
So VBA enthusiasts won't be able to (easily) edit the code or learn from it.
Related
I recently wrote a form in VBA for Outlook and saved it to my personal form folder.
Now this form should get exported in a userfriendly fashion. What is the best practise here?
I know that you can go to File -> Export file... in VBA, but this seems to have caused some problems in the past and doesn't seem very intuitive to use both the frm and the frx files.
The form is supposed to be accessed by employees to book their holiday.
That is COM add-ins were invented for. They are designed to be installed on multiple machines and users. VBA macros are not designed for transferring the code - the infrastructure doesn't provide anything for moving solutions automatically like you could do in case of COM add-ins. You need have do that manually in VBA.
If you consider moving your solution to the add-in rails, see Walkthrough: Create your first VSTO Add-in for Outlook to get started quickly. You may choose VB.NET which has a similar syntax with VBA.
Background and Problem
I lead a team of tech writers. Our team has a Word template (.dotm file) that has a bunch of VBA macros we've created over the years to help us automate tasks in Word. The macros are obviously stored inside of a .dotm template. Given that the code is stored in a binary file, the code is not easily traceable across commits.
Currently, we have to pull the changes on the branch and then open the macro inside Word's embedded code editor from the .dotm. But there's no way to see what exact code changes someone else made line by line or resolve conflicts using something like Beyond Compare.
What I Need
I'd like to find a way to automatically expose the VBA code from the .dotm as some kind of text file so that we can:
Do Word VBA coding tasks within VSC
Easily track and review each others code changes at the line level using our git repository
Resolve merge conflicts more easily
Has anyone found a way to do this?
What I've tried
I've tried searching online and on stackoverflow.
Hoping it might help, I installed ScriptLab, and I after following the MS tutorial, I now have Office Add-Ons working with VSC.
(https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/other/office),
(https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/tutorials/word-tutorial) While the Office Add-Ons through VSC does provide an alternate (more modern) way of automating using Javascript, and the .js files are commit-able, it's not providing a way to expose the Word VBA, at least not that I could see.
Thank you in advance!
ScriptLab add-on is for playing with JavaScript code instantly, not designed as a macro infrastructure in Office.
Sounds like you need to switch your VBA macros to COM add-ins rails. There is no converters that can do this part of work for you automatically.
You may consider creating a VB.NET based add-in. In that case you will avoid language translating issues. You may find the Converting Code from VBA to Visual Basic .NET article helpful. It presents issues to consider when converting your Microsoft Office solutions from Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to Visual Basic .NET. Provides a general overview of their differences, and then uses examples from Word and Excel to describe how you can use Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System to convert your code.
Trying to save a MS Word macro as an add-in, fully independent, portable and installable as a word tool. What kind of literature should I consult to learn this technique?
So far I've tried looking on Google and StackOverflow. Many people ask similar questions, no one seems to provide a valid answer.
In the end, I would like to be able to export a macro in the form of a exe/batch/whatever to be summoned/installed from word and customize the tools ribbon permanently, to conceal the macro sourcecode and easily propagate to other machines.
It's not possible to use VBA macros as exe or batch files. It is possible, however, to load a macro-enabled template as an add-in. All the functionality will then be available (Ribbon, keyboard shortcuts, macros, building blocks).
Save the document as a dotm file (template, macro-enabled)
Copy the file in the STARTUP folder. Word will then load it automatically.
For a "real" add-in that uses the same COM object model as VBA it's necessary to build software based on the IDTExtensibility2 interface. There are number of tools that use this, making things easier. Microsoft's VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) is one that costs nothing.
Another alternative is to use the newer Java Script APIs for Office. These are, in the case of Word, incomplete as far as functionality for the object model is concerned (can't do everything the COM object model is capable of).
I have created a working Powerpoint add-in (.ppam) that offers several time saving features, and added a custom UI ribbon tab to improve accessibility.
As I look to distribute this add-in to users, I'm looking to improve code security by compiling it into a COM add-in (.dll) via VS Express.
I have looked all over the web for documentation on this, and have found some promising source, such as:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/creatingcomaddin.aspx
Unfortunately, nearly everything I find appear to be quite outdated and based on Office XP or 2003, when I'm looking at Office 2010. I'm probably doing something wrong here, but I'm having trouble replicating their instructions on my end, running into errors like being unable to add a reference library or the code they suggest is not recognized. I actually am even unsure how to open for example the sample VB project that the Pearson site provides from the link above to imitate. I think all this may be because of the different versions of Office and Visual Studio, but could certainly be wrong.
Could anyone point me in the right direction? My understanding is that it's actually quite simple to convert the code from VBA to VB (just involves adding "Powerpoint.Application." in front of things like "activewindow"). So I just need to figure out how to convert a very simple VBA add-in into a COM add-in in VS Exp 2012 for Office 2010, and then can leverage the process to convert the full add-in.
Apologies if I'm using any of the terms incorrectly.
I have a series of big excel files that work like a program, but I hate beeing tied up (stuck in VBA for excel 2003), so...
Whats the best way to implement a gui over a excel vba program (office 2003)? (are there any tools for that... I want to move away from the office suite, but still have it in the background)
Or what's the easiest alternative for migrating this code to a more open language.
Any ideias?
Have you looked at VSTO?
Resolver One is a Python spreadsheet system with strong support for importing from MS Excel. It's often used for the situation you describe.