Can VBA jive with C#?

[Engineer Joe]

I've been messing around with VBA for a while now in excel, and it has been a great benefit. Now I'm interested in getting a little outside of excel, and I've begun to experiment with C#. Does anyone here also work in C#, and if so, do you use it to work within excel, or can you run VBA with C#? I mean, can you find a way to interface between the two (VBA and C#). I'm trying to get an understanding of the potential of applying C# to all of my VBA programming....

 

[SydneyGeek]

You can't use C# directly in the Office apps -- that's the domain of VBA. However, if you are prepared to stump up the cash (and it's not cheap) you can get VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office). VSTO uses an infrastructure that lets you hook into Office apps using any .NET programming language, including C# and VB.Net and it sounds like a good idea, except for the price -- which means that noone I know uses it.

Denis

 

[Engineer Joe]

Thank you. I will use it to rule the world... until google releases it's O/S.

 

[Smitty]

Note that in Visual Studio 2008 VSTO is included.

If you want to get it free, then you need to sign up for Microsoft events, like Live Launch, where attendees get copies. I got Vista at the last one as well.

I can't guarantee that there will be any more until the next big release though.

 

[RoryA]

You can create add-ins and other .dll files in C# (as well as managed documents if you have VSTO) and call them from Office apps. The migration path to VB.Net would be a lot easier though, IMO.