I used it recently because it's the built-in scripting option for Outlook. I found myself writing the same emails over and over again, so I automated the writing with VBA, using input prompts for the variable parts. I'm not familiar with the available objects, so leaned heavily on chat gpt for that. Associated the script with a macro, then linked to a menu button and now I can quickly compose an email with a shortcut key.
Why do people still use VBA?
81–90 of 421 posts
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#82Corps have a dev environment sitting right in Excel that doesn't need special (management, management's management, adding to a registrar of projects, budgeting or project manager assigned, etc) approval for non-stock software. The stack's Excel, plus Sharepoint if you're really looking for a networked data store that also has a web interface. From that end-user direction, solutions emerge. And they're in VBA.
I've seen the following at least twice: some department manager (marketeers typically have a nack for this) needs something, can't or won't bother the development team and starts off with "how difficult can it be" and before you know it they've written a few hundred lines of VBA, which serves their needs.
But then, the next phase starts: that scripts gets copied over (because Jim wanted to run it too) and modified (Jane has a different VBA version) and expanded (now it does "THIS!" too).
Now it's a 1500 line kludge and they want to unload it, ie pass it over to development for maintenance.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always read those “X automated their job, finishes it 15 minutes and then does whatever” and wonder how true are they? How could it be that nobody notices or cares?
I have a few colleagues that told me they have a job like that. Not done in 15 minutes but 2 hours, then they goof off for the next 6 hours. There are two reasons: 1. They have a specific job with a specific set of duties (think sysadmins, or administrative duties) in a large company or in a state beurocracy. 2. They would rather go home or do something more but they are not permitted: they have metered time in the o…
> they seem to be fine with it, or rather, have accepted it.
i mean, i would imagine some people want to see purpose in their jobs, while others are just treating it as a job and whatever happens with the output of the job is of no consequence. And this is esp. true of gov't jobs, but by no means do the gov't have a monopoly on such inefficiencies.
But my opinion is that there's something systemic that is preventing these jobs from being competed on and efficiencies eked out.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. My friend automated his whole job in Excel. He supposedly can do a days work in fifteen minutes and then just hang out. Their computers are super locked down, can’t install anything, can’t go to any non-whitelisted sites, but they have Excel.
I always read those “X automated their job, finishes it 15 minutes and then does whatever” and wonder how true are they? How could it be that nobody notices or cares?
I've known plenty of devs who have managers who don't understand the effort required to do their job, and who have automated a lot of it, but they rarely goof off. If you're capable of that you're rarely the goofing off type. They've always been people who help others a lot, write high quality code, do things that are extra to their job (running guilds, sitting on steering groups, etc). Maybe I've been lucky.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. My friend automated his whole job in Excel. He supposedly can do a days work in fifteen minutes and then just hang out. Their computers are super locked down, can’t install anything, can’t go to any non-whitelisted sites, but they have Excel.
I always read those “X automated their job, finishes it 15 minutes and then does whatever” and wonder how true are they? How could it be that nobody notices or cares?
I'm sure it does happen; there are a surprising number of duct-taping jobs where a person is hired to fill in a systemic/organisational/processual gap with manual labour. Those are often very good targets for automation.
There are also the other stories we don't hear: One of my first jobs involved a very repetitive software task that got boring quickly. I spent four weeks trying to automate it, but eventually had to declare failure[1] and then I had to explain to my boss why I was a month behind on my work that was due in a couple of weeks[2].
I imagine that for every "automated my job and now I can do it in 15 minutes" story there are 15 stories of "I automated my job and now I work just as hard maintaining the automation" and another 50 stories of the "I tried automating my job but failed" kind. Only the first one gets re-told.
[1]: Mainly due to hardware quirks I didn't have the experience and skill to work around.
[2]: This is not a story about how automating something is bad; it's a story about the bad decisions one makes when one is inexperienced!
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
PowerShell including ISE, with tabs, multi-line cursor, syntax highlighting, autocomplete, step-through debugger, snippets, scriptable/extensible.
PowerShell with ISE is a lot better than the VBA editor in many ways but you're still in the same situation of using a long deprecated ide with an ancient version of a programming language (ISE is deprecated and if you're using the built in version of PowerShell you're stuck on the last legacy framework version from 7 years ago forever and missing a ton of improvements and fixes from newer versions of powershell)
So disappointed that MS hasn't rolled out PowerShell 7 but I guess it's easier to develop a programming language when you don't have to deal with users.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#87Because it's basically VB6
Vb6 at least had "on error goto".
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. My friend automated his whole job in Excel. He supposedly can do a days work in fifteen minutes and then just hang out. Their computers are super locked down, can’t install anything, can’t go to any non-whitelisted sites, but they have Excel.
It feels contradictory to talk about these super locked down environments when "lock down Excel macros" in my view comes first if you're trying to secure an environment. I deal with before dealing with local administrator access such is the prevalence of it being exploited.
I know a small business owner that says one of his top security threats is Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel docs attached to emails that try to infect / phish credentials. He has fully disabled all macros on all regular employee computers. He said that it is a real battle. Sometimes I miss the good old days (15+ years ago) when the Internet was a less threatening place!
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#89I'm glad I've worked primarily in early SV startups. None of this BS to deal with.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#90Because there was no good alternative until recently. The future is with the new "add-ins" model: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/overvie... Say what you will about typescript, but at least it's better than VBA. My main issue is that unlike VBA, I can't program it from right there in Excel. Sometimes I don't want to start up a full-fledged add-in project that's meant to be reused. I just want to…
EDIT: I did not see the script-lab mention at the end of your comment. Microsoft Script-lab will allow you to do just that. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/profiles/script-lab/ The other issue: it is not trivial to share an addin to end users. You need to publish it to marketplace or sharepoint. Sideloading requires SMB server and GPO. However there is an option that is not mentioned anywhere: it is possible t…
JS Add-ins are way limited than VSTO Add-ins. With the former you are limited to a side panel and add buttons to a specific section in the ribbon while with the VSTO you can even customize views with region forms.