MAC office 2008 VBA

[ponch]

I have an order form built with VBA.
A customer has just bought a new MAC and gets the following msg when opening my file.

'Visual basic macros do not work in office 2008 for MAC'
it then gives options to open and remove macros or open and keep macros.

I have used this code on PC and MAC for years.
Does anyone know if MAC office 2008 has really disabled VBA or is there a way to switch it back on?

......h.....e....l.....p.

 

[pgc01]

Hi ponch

Sorry, really bad news: your nightmare is true, as the message says, there is not vba in Office for Mac 2008. This incomprehensible move from Microsoft caused an uproar in the MAC community, and Microsoft already announced that the next version of MAC will have vba again. So, if you need vba you have to re-install your prior version of the Office for MAC.

 

[ponch]

Thanks buddy,
I'm looking forward to informing my colleague, who is the very proud owner of a very pretty MAC with these options

• buy an old version of office or
• wait for the next version

arrrgghhh

 

[Legacy 14611]

A bit of my experience may or may not help.

I do most of my work on a MacBook Pro.

It has Office 2004 for Mac which I use for Word and Excel occasionally.

Quoting one Mac forum contributor "Microsoft crippled Excel VBA (2004) for Mac so it only works in a limited way".

I installed Mac Office 2008 and found it can't use VBA at all. So I just deleted it again.

I am using Windows Office 2003 on the Mac by running Windows (XP) as just another window and running Excel in this window. It's very easy to do this with the programs Parallels, or VM Fusion or similar. Easy to copy, paste etc from one to other or move easily between the Windows window and other Mac windows.

Alternatively can boot into Windows using BootCamp but I don't do this often.

As a postscript, this was for a while the fastest way to run Windows on a portable machine. At end of 2007 PC World Mag did a speed test and concluded MacBook Pro (i.e. my current machine) ran Windows faster than any other portable including dedicated Windows ones.

My own experience supports this. If I want fast-running VB code I always do this on the Macbook via Parallels, rather than using the dedicated Windows notebook of similar specification that I also have available.

 

[ponch]

Thanks for the insight,
If I can get my colleague past the sacrelidge of installing windows on MAC this may be a good option.

 

[Legacy 14611]

it's only a humble window after all......

 

[pgc01]

Hi Rugila

Thank you for sharing the information. I knew of that type of solution but I though it would mean losing performance. The way you described it makes it a nice alternative to the MAC users.

Cheers

 

[mikerickson]

How extensive is the VBA in the 2004 workbook. Does it invoke userforms? Is scripting Excel 2008 with AppleScript an option.

(**** knot heads at MicroSoft.)

 

[Legacy 14611]

A link to the PC article testing out the Macbook as the fastest Vista laptop is: http://www.pcworld.com/article/136649-3/in_pictures_the_most_notable_notebooks_of_2007.html
This seemed to cause a bit of consternation, and after a while someone dredged up a "portable" machine that, while it could run Vista faster than the Macbook, was also about twice as thick, about three times the weight and had about one third the battery life of the Macbook.

There's quite a bit on Google about these sorts of speed comparison, Macbook vs Vista machines.

Just for fun I've just compared (using the excel timer) speeds of the same VB macro for calculating all prime numbers up to 10 million.
On Macbook running Excel 2003 with XP using Parallels that task took 4.5 seconds.
On same Macbook using Mac Excel 2004 same task took 78 seconds.
Toshiba Vista with similar specs to the Macbook (2gb ram, intel dual core) about 4.7 secs.

Mac Excel 2004 won't use useful techniques such as Scripting.Dictionary and vbscript.regexp (they give error message "ActiveX component can't create object"). It can do Advanced Filter, but I have never wanted to spend the time finding out the extent of what it can and can't do.

My personal assessments are: Mac Excel 2004 too slow and too limited to be worth using, Excel 2003 for Windows run on the Macbook is the best for my purposes. (I don't currently have excel 2007)

Also, there's the PC World and Google info as indicated above to keep in mind, and that the Macbook has its own excellent operating system quite apart from any Windows or Windows programs it can run on the side .....