Quick Link: VBA Scripting to Return to Office 2008 for Mac
For those of you who rely on macro's in the Office suite of applications, news from the Microsoft BU released today, mentions that VBA support will be added back in when the next version of Office for Mac is released. There is no mention of a date, so it could still be some time. However, when VBA scripting does return it may mean that some third-party applications that rely on it (EndNote, I'm looking at you), will regain full functionality in Office. That's a kinda, sorta, maybe of course. To be somewhat fair, Thompson Scientific, the makers of EndNote, have stated that a version of EndNote that will work absent VBA is in the works, but no release date has been set that I'm aware of. And to be honest, I'm not a fan of EndNote at all.
More information on the Office updates is available here.
Comments
Not Quite...
Actually, as I read the announcement, Microsoft is saying that Office 2010 (or whatever) will have VBA, but Office 2008 will never get it.
As for EndNote, I suspect that Thompson understands that there's now some competition on the Mac, and they should also support programs like Pages, which use AppleScript. The rumors I heard were that EndNote would get some AppleScript support to integrate with Office 2008 and Pages. Eventually.
Office 2012
Based on past performance, it is more like 2012!
---------------------------
Drew McCormack
http://www.maccoremac.com
http://www.macanics.net
http://www.macresearch.org
Re: Not Quite...
I wasn't really certain how to interpret the announcement. As it reads, you are almost certainly correct. I guess it depends on what they consider a new version if for example a Service Pack is considered a version (probably not).
Why I leaned toward 2008 though, is that it remains in Office 2007 for Windows (and is still slated to be removed in a future version). So it seems odd that they'd add it back, only to perhaps immediately remove it... I don't know. All I do know is that they never should have removed it given how many people rely on macro's.
Re: Thompson. You'd think they would have recognized that they have competition, but I don't think they do (or care). Because if they did, they wouldn't continue to release the exact same program with slightly different version numbers, with features that work less and less reliably. I've yet to meet someone who says that they actually like using EndNote. Although they may be out there, they are far from the majority... I'm ranting, but EndNote puts me in a bad mood.
office 2008 will not have VBA.
straight from the Mac BU lead dev:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/616008222931?r=689002322931#689002322931
"Office 2008 will not have VB. The next major release of Office is where VB will re-appear. As for the timeframe, it should be on the order of 2-3 years, which is our more usual release schedule. Office 2008's release cycle took longer than originally intended.
Schwieb"
Any bugs?
Has anybody tried the update?
Re: Any bugs?
I just installed the Update (but I only have Excel installed) and so far it's working fine. In fact it looks like they added in a few things that didn't make it into the original release (or at least made them more obvious to get to).
Regards,
Dave