I am a big advocate of moving away from VBA and adopting something like VSTO or Excel DNA based on your requirements. But I strongly advice to stop using VBA in your new projects.
Coming to the question, Is VBA going away? Answer is Yes. An Absolute YES. But When? I don't know and I don't think that any at Microsoft even knows. Microsoft stopped working on language enhancements of VBA, way back, at least a decade ago. Last improvement to VBA was made for Office XP, released in 2001.
Why is still being supported as the "primary" platform in Office 2010? No.. it is not the primary anymore, but is still being supported. Yes, even in 64bit editions. Microsoft is all about business, like any other company. Office suite generates more revenue to Microsoft than any of their products including Windows. They cannot afford to risk that by removing VBA from Office. Next best thing they can do is not improving it, and say that it is still being supported, and promote alternate technologies like VSTO and over time people forget about VBA, and Microsoft can slowly pull the plug.
How far are they in that path?
It is getting very difficult to find developers and I have seen developers threatening to leave if they are going to work full time on VBA. Developers are already seeing it as a dead end. I feel that we are close and at the most next version will be still have support to VBA. Microsoft might very well support it beyond 2015 though.
We are already working on VSTO for all our new office solutions development. However have no plans to convert out legacy VBA code to VSTO. It is too risky and too expensive to provide reasonable justification to business.
Good Luck for all who are still focused on VBA.
Coming to the question, Is VBA going away? Answer is Yes. An Absolute YES. But When? I don't know and I don't think that any at Microsoft even knows. Microsoft stopped working on language enhancements of VBA, way back, at least a decade ago. Last improvement to VBA was made for Office XP, released in 2001.
Why is still being supported as the "primary" platform in Office 2010? No.. it is not the primary anymore, but is still being supported. Yes, even in 64bit editions. Microsoft is all about business, like any other company. Office suite generates more revenue to Microsoft than any of their products including Windows. They cannot afford to risk that by removing VBA from Office. Next best thing they can do is not improving it, and say that it is still being supported, and promote alternate technologies like VSTO and over time people forget about VBA, and Microsoft can slowly pull the plug.
How far are they in that path?
It is getting very difficult to find developers and I have seen developers threatening to leave if they are going to work full time on VBA. Developers are already seeing it as a dead end. I feel that we are close and at the most next version will be still have support to VBA. Microsoft might very well support it beyond 2015 though.
We are already working on VSTO for all our new office solutions development. However have no plans to convert out legacy VBA code to VSTO. It is too risky and too expensive to provide reasonable justification to business.
Good Luck for all who are still focused on VBA.
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