I want to manipulate data in excel with some complex functions.
It seems that I have to use VBA.
However I don't want to learn it.
Is there any other way to do programming in the excel? Some language like C#?
I don't want to create a independent C# application using some interface provided by Excel. Only program in excel, like VBA, but a different language.
I don't want to create a independent C# application using some interface provided by Excel. Only program in excel, like VBA, but a different language.
You cannot unfortunately. To program in Excel from within Excel you will have to learn VBA.
To program for Excel, be it VBA, VSTO(C#, VB.Net) you need to understand the Excel Object Model (EOM) without which you cannot do programming for Excel.
You don't need to learn VBA per se if you want to develop Office solutions from C# but as you become familiar with the EOM, you will notice that you automatically develop an understanding for VBA.
EDIT
Excel Object Model from Excel's perspective
Excel Object Model Overview from VS's perspective
You can develop Excel "Add-Ins" in C# using VSTO - Visual Studio Tools for Office (MSDN link).
This is not truly "inside Excel," but once installed your add-in can run without having to start up any external application.
Excel has a VBA editor built in to use VBA only.
If you want to use another language it would need to be external.
While you could make a C# add in, this is not in the built in editor as you described.
To the best of my knowledge, you simply cannot do this right now. In Office 15 it looks as though you'll be able to use JS:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-focus-on-html5-and-javascript-for-office-15-extensions/10266
Related
I'm maintaining a legacy Excel workbook that has a significant amount done in VBA. For threading's sake, I need to move some of that work out of VBA. I have prototyped a DLL written in C#, but deployment (with registration) is more difficult.
Can you interact with the new HTML5 style add-ins using VBA? So, in this case, writing a function in Javascript, and then calling it with specific parameters from the existing VBA macro. If so, how?
Unfortunately this is not a scenarios supported by Microsoft nowadays.
I am fairly experienced with Excel and VBA and I know how to create add-ins. However, I haven't found a satisfactory solution for protecting my VBA code once it is in an add-in. How can I make this code inaccessible to the user?
You can protect your VBA code against viewing, however it is relatively easy to crack.
You can easily Google out how to protect a VBA module.
Alternatively, you can create an Add in using Visual Studio. Yet again, .Net code can be decompiled in seconds. Thus, you would need to use a code obfuscator.
I just started to learn VBA. As far as I understood, one uses VBA to write macros in MS-Excel. But I wonder if it the only area of application for VBA. Can it be also used like many other standard languages - like Python, for example.
If it is the case, how can I compile a VBA program? Should it be compiled? How can I run such a VBA program?
VBA is compiled to p-code. P-code is an intermediate language that requires an additional runtime in order to execute. This runtime is hosted by most Microsoft Office applications (including various non-Microsoft applications).
In short, you cannot write a VBA only app that is compiled to an .EXE.
To create a stand-alone VBA-like program, you would need to use Visual Basic 6 or earlier. The successor of Visual Basic 6, of course, is VB.NET, which is a very different animal.
VBA can be licensed, and there are quite a few pproducts outside office that use VBA. MS no longer issues new licenses. There are non-MS VBA implementations, like from Summit software. In any case you need to have your own product that would host VBA.
A notable application supporting VBA is AutoDesk AutoCAD. It licenses the VBA runtime and has its own object model.
If you don't compile the program ahead of time (in the Visual Basic Editor click Debug -> Compile), then Microsoft Office compiles it at run time. You really should compile frequently though because that is how you find compile errors.
How you run a VBA application depends entirely on how you have set it up to run. In Excel for example you can have the Workbook_Open event start your code when the workbook is opened or create custom menus that users click on to run the code. In Access, you can set a form to display when the database opens or create an autoexec macro that will run when the database opens. etc. etc.
Like someone else said above, you can't create .exe files of VBA. The code has to run in a Microsoft Office Application.
I have been working on an excel file which will combine each of the excel files
sent by the users. So I will have a user entry row per file.
I started by using VBA. I thought that it would be the best, natural choice, though
I did not know how to use it previously. At the moment I have come across problems that I have no idea how to solve in VBA - I want to open each of the excel files that contains a user form seamlessly even if it contains VBA code, but what happens is that each opening user gets a dialog that requires them to accept or reject VBA.
I really like to learn new things but it is starting to annoy me. I do hope there some other solution to do that, but not in VBA. Is it possible to do that in some other language, and fire it from VBA?
I would love to have all bounded in that master excel file, or at most just to provide some library. The excel version is 2003.
how are you opening the file? Workbooks.Open will open an excel file which has vba without asking the user to accept or reject code.
Perhaps its an issue with the security settings you have. You can check these out from the menu - Tools, Macro and then security
your question is not well defined.
if you need to manipulate Excel files without opening Excel program, you can use other programming languages. Either interface with the COM / ActiveX objects that excel provides to the operating system, or use independent libraries (e.g. for PHP, Java, Python and more).
Another solution (to whatever problem you may have) is to use OpenOffice for working with excel files. It has its own macro language, as well as built-in bridges and interfaces to java & python.
I've created an addin for Excel containing a number of different functions. Now, I need to create a user guide (a set of webpages will suffice) defining what the functions do; their inputs and their outputs.
Are there any tools that will help me do this? Has anyone seen any good examples recently, or shall I just mimic Excel Help?
MZ Tools has a documentation generation tool for VBA and VB6. It might give you a good start, at least.
http://xll.codeplex.com generates .chm files that are integrated into Excel.