Banner Default Image

Visual Basic for Applications

​Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6, which was declared legacy in 2008, and is an associated integrated development environment (IDE). Although pre-.NET Visual Basic is no longer supported or updated by Microsoft, the VBA programming language was upgraded in 2010 with the introduction of Visual Basic for Applications 7 in Microsoft Office applications.[1] As of 2020, VBA has held its position as "most dreaded" language for developers for 2 years, according to some who participated in surveys undertaken by Stack Overflow. (The most dreaded language for 2018 was Visual Basic 6).[2]

Visual Basic for Applications enables building user-defined functions (UDFs), automating processes and accessing Windows API and other low-level functionality through dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). It supersedes and expands on the abilities of earlier application-specific macro programming languages such as Word's WordBASIC. It can be used to control many aspects of the host application, including manipulating user interface features, such as menus and toolbars, and working with custom user forms or dialog boxes.

As its name suggests, VBA is closely related to Visual Basic and uses the Visual Basic Runtime Library. However, VBA code normally can only run within a host application, rather than as a standalone program. VBA can, however, control one application from another using OLE Automation. For example, VBA can automatically create a Microsoft Word report from Microsoft Excel data that Excel collects automatically from polled sensors. VBA can use, but not create, ActiveX/COM DLLs, and later versions add support for class modules.

VBA is built into most Microsoft Office applications, including Office for Mac OS X (except version 2008), and other Microsoft applications, including Microsoft MapPoint and Microsoft Visio. VBA is also implemented, at least partially, in applications published by companies other than Microsoft, including ArcGIS, AutoCAD, CorelDraw, LibreOffice, Reflection,[3] SolidWorks,[4] WordPerfect, and UNICOM System Architect (which supports VBA 7.1).

Grantham (/ˈɡrænθəm/ GRAN-thəm) is a market and industrial town in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It straddles the London–Edinburgh East Coast Main Line and the River Witham and is bounded to the west by the A1 north–south trunk road. It lies about 23 miles (37 kilometres) south of the county town, Lincoln, and 22 miles (35 kilometres) east of Nottingham. The population in 2016 was put at 44,580.[1] Grantham is known as the birthplace of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for educating Isaac Newton at the King's School, as the workplace of the UK's first female police officer, Edith Smith in 1914, and for making the UK's first running diesel engine in 1892 and tractor in 1896. Thomas Paine worked there as an excise officer in the 1790s.