VBA VS. VSTO what is the difference, should I upgrade?

Question

I am a huge fan of the KISS principle (Keep it simple) and a long time VBA for excel user. However all the articles I can find on VBA vs. VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) s

Answer 1

I'm very surprised by your answers towards VBA.

Working with VBA for some years (mainly with outlook), I was bored with various negative aspects and I'm moving to VSTO since it is much more efficient.

I was confronted to many negative points:

Developping

• Vba IDE is very limited,
• Userforms are limited (try to make a rich text box)

Deploying

• User need to do too many actions (modify security settings, import references, modify ribbon ...)

Updating

• Can't be updated automatically, you need to send new files for each update to the user .

Add-ins are much more powerfull (by powerfull I mean it's easier to make complexe things), can add buttons to ribbons to lauch functions and are more easy to deploy (take a look at ClickOnce).

Generally, VBA macros are made for a personnal use while VSTO applications are made to be distributed as you can read here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/290779/managing-and-distributing-outlook-visual-basic-for-vba

If you are developing a solution that you intend to distribute to more than a few people, you should convert your VBA code into an Outlook COM or VSTO add-in or an Office add-in for Outlook.