VBA Support

[rpatrick]

Microsoft have apparently announced that their next version of Office Mac will regain VBA Macro support. This will both please an annoy a lot of people who have just bought their copy of Office 2008 won't it!

Richard

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-13MacBU2008PR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases

[pluby]

I noticed that there is no mention of when this mystical next version will be released. If it will be 2012, then why are they bothering to mention it?

Patrick

[rpatrick]

Good point - it could surely damage their sales of Office 2008 as people wait until the next release. OTOH, maybe people who need VBA support never would have bought Office 2008 anyway and would instead rely on 2004 or Neo? Hm, always seemed odd to me that companies release software and then almost immediately begin talking about the next release - I never know whether to buy or not with these things.

At least I know I don't need to bother with Office 2008 or Office 2012 should that be the next one!

Richard

[OPENSTEP]

Well, the two most plausible theories I heard were that this may be an indication they're planning on maintaining VB support to some degree on the Windows side, but I don't know how firewalled MacBU is from the Win Office team.

I suspect the other one that is biting some people is the lack of Word VBA support. I think that some of the products people have looked for when using Neo here may rely on VBA in Word, such as Endnote (but I may be wrong). There are also a number of people's custom workflows that depend on it. In general, it's easier to just make enough noise instead of having to actually sit down, re-plan, and re-invest engineering resources to undertake a complete rewrite of a workflow or custom tool.

Sometimes if enough people make enough noise, development tool companies (yes, Office is a development tool, not just an office suite) change their minds instead. Witness Carbon.

ed