Back last year, Gareth Hayter of Slyce Software emailed me about VScript, an alternative to VBA for writing functions and macros in Excel. Unfortunately, for various reasons, I have not been able to look into it in any detail, but it certainly sounds interesting.
VScript is based on Excel-Dna, which is a project to integrate .NET into Excel. The aim is thus to allow you to write functions and macros in C# or VB.Net – so, presumably it is aimed at developers familiar with those languages, and preferring them over VBA. Code is claimed to run considerably faster than VBA (not hard to believe). VScript provides an IDE integrated with Excel, as with VBA. You can use VScript to create stand-alone XLL add-ins, and digitally sign these.
What about VSTO? Gareth says:
VScript is different from VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) in many ways:
- VSTO is for professional programmers: It can be complex and confusing to use and requires a lot of time, effort and money to learn.
- VSTO is expensive: You need to buy Visual Studio® which starts at $799.
- VSTO is not built into Excel®: It is an external program and works in a very different way from VBA.
- VSTO projects are complicated to deploy: VSTO is not integrated into Excel, which means that it’s difficult to make a few changes and test them quickly. It requires ClickOnce deployment.
- VSTO cannot create User-Defined Functions (UDFs): With VSTO, you can’t create functions that you can use in a similar way to SUM() and AVG().
One to watch …
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