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Microsoft: VBA's Demise 'Greatly Exaggerated'
Microsoft this week took steps to assure Office developers that it has no plans to kill off Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
Speculation that Redmond might eliminate VBA started last year when the company closed its VBA licensing program, and reached a peak early this week after the new Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 debuted without it.
However, according to Microsoft, the rumors are false.
Wednesday on its Visual Studio 2008 blog, in a post titled, "The Reports of VBA's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated," the company explicitly stated that VBA is not going anywhere.
"The report that the next generation of Office will not contain VBA is untrue -- the next generation of the Microsoft Office system will definitely contain all of the functionality that developers and power users expect from VBA," the post stated.
That message was reiterated today in a posting on the company's Excel team blog. "While it’s true that VBA isn't supported in the latest version of Office for the Mac...we have no plans to remove VBA from future versions of Office for Windows," wrote Joseph Chirilov, program manager for Microsoft Office. "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."
According to PC Magazine blogger Michael J. Miller, when he asked why Microsoft didn't include VBA in the new Mac Office, "I was told it would have taken two more years to rewrite VBA for the Intel environment."
About the Author
Becky Nagel is vice president of AI for 1105 Media, where she specializes in training internal and external customers on maximizing their business potential via a wide variety of generative AI technologies as well as developing cutting-edge AI content and events. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Uses," regularly leads research studies on generative AI business usage, and serves as the director of AI Boardroom, a new resource for C-level executives looking to excel in the AI era. Prior to her current position she was a technical leader for 1105 Media's Web, advertising and production teams as well as editorial director for a suite of enterprise technology publications, including serving as founding editor of PureAI.com. She has 20 years of enterprise technology journalism experience, and regularly speaks and writes about generative AI, AI, edge computing and other cutting-edge technologies. She can be reached at [email protected].