I'm currently working on an vba project to help document developers do their work better and faster.
The tool is helpful during the developing, but however, it's no longer needed after the document is complete.
So, is there any ideas, about how to export a pure document without vba code automatically? Or shall I do this stupidly by opening vba and remove all of its code?
Further more, Is there any ways, to automatically apply vba code to an existing document?
You can create an add-in. Your VBA code lives in the add-in, but operates on your documents. The add-in can create a custom menu to run your various routines.
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.
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.
I am trying to develop add-ins because my organization wants to move away from macros, due to the logistical tasks of deploying to thousands of users.
Is there a guide to repurpose existing VBA code into add-ins?
I want to be able to view/modify the source code.
Most helpful article so far:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/csharpfaq/2010/09/27/converting-a-vba-macro-to-c-4-0/ where they suggest "recording a macro in Office and then use the results in their code in VS".
I'm not aware of any VBA to VB.NET conversion tools, but the similarities are enough that you can copy and paste most code and correct the differences on the individual lines that prevent compilation. However it would be necessary to have a decent working knowledge of VB.NET in order to do this effectively.
I would though recommend that this task be considered a complete re-write, especially since you need to port it to an add-in project. The way you call your VBA methods may differ greatly depending on whether they are event or UI/Ribbon driven.
Also note that there is no macro recorder for Outlook.
I've created Outlook 2007 macro, which add additional item to mail context menu (Sub Application_ItemContextMenuDisplay). Now I would like to allow other users to use this macro. How can I simplify macro installation for them?
Now I have to ask them to run Macro editor and copy-paste the macro code.
Probably, I can convert that to some Outlook addin / msi?
There's no way to deliver VBA code in a "correct" way to other users. Microsoft itself recommends your approach (copy-paste), because that is the only way to preserve what other users have possibly inserted in their outlook code file (VBAProject.otm).
I propose that you do some studying for yourself before asking beginner questions. There are plenty of resources available which can be found easily. I recommend you to start with OutlookCode , where a very good choice of articles will led you to understand how to go on.