The Future of (or lack thereof) VBA and VSTO

[Debonairist]

This morning I was reading an article about Excel 2010 and the future of VBA. Everything is always changing so fast! :banghead: It's immpossible to keep up.

There are rumors that VBA will not be supported beyond Excel 2010. That VSTO (which I just learned about today) will be the new Office developer tool.

I'm really concerned. I'm just getting off the ground learning VBA this year.
I heard nightmares about VB6 folks going through hell when it was no longer supported.

My whole premise for learning to program is to develop, automate and manipulate Office. I'm concerned I may learn VBA and by the time I get any good, my skills will be obsolete or at least unsupported.

I suppose I could still use VBA on older versions of Excel. But still, I wonder, what is VSTO? I've taken one course in VB, should I just keep going with that and explore learning VSTO. :dunno

I just want to be more efficient and able to do more with office. I don't want to have to go through this whole learning process all over again in three or four years.

Can somebody give me some insights with respect to the issues commented on above.

[Ischyros]

Pretty good summary and conclusion...

http://bringingclosure.blogspot.com/2008/03/vba-and-vsto.html

[Bob Phillips]

They haven't got a good story on integrating VS within Excel yet, and nothing in 2010 suggests that they have it there. So assuming it is the release beyond 2010 before they do, they will still keep VBA in that release as they would be stupid to ditch VBA before its successor is proven (stupid in that many corporations would just avoid that release).

So, I conclude that VBA is here for at least 2 more releases, which means another 5 years at least.

Plenty of time to get up to speed with VSTO.