No VBA in Office

[Charles Dyer]

On 22 Nov, 2006, at 14:02, Ashley Aitken wrote:

>
> On 23/11/2006, at 1:54 AM, Mark Smith wrote:
>
>>
>> On 22 Nov 2006, at 13:45, Charles Dyer wrote:
>>
>>> For me and those I support, there was one reason, and one reason  
>>> only, to stick with MS Office: compatibility with Office in  
>>> Windows, including macros.
>>
>> Does lack of support for VBA mean that *no* Excel macros will work  
>> in Excel 12, or whatever its going to be called ?
>
> Yes, no Excel macros will work in the next version of Excel (for  
> the Mac).  However, one shouldn't confuse this with Excel functions  
> (equations in cells) that will still work fine.
>
> The problem is there are a lot of power users of Excel that use VBA  
> to make Excel do some pretty amazing (or horrific, depends on the  
> way you look at it) things.
>
> They've just lost the biggest reason (for them) to buy MS Office  
> for a Mac (or a Mac in some cases).

Frankly, without VBA I have no reason to buy a new version of MS  
Office. It's that simple.

This means that there will be Macs running Office 2004 around here  
until there's no VBA in Windows, either. Or until there's  something  
VBA-like available for new Office/Office workalikes. If Apple gets  
their fingers out and allows Stupid Word Processor Tricks and Stupid  
Spreadsheet Tricks with the next version of iWork, so long as iWork  
eats Office files and iWork macros are close to Office macros, well  
then Office will be banished from my office.

The reason I buy MS Office is for compatibility with WinOffice. If I  
don't get that, and I include macro compatibility when I say  
'compatibility', then why should I buy Office when iWork is far  
cheaper and OpenOffice is free?