Difference between Visual Basic 6 0 and VBA

Question

What is the difference between the two  I always thought VBA is somewhat  crippled  version of VB  but when a friend asked me the other day I had no idea what the actual differences are   Also  when you use  for example  Excel  is that VB or VBA

User · Answer

Actually VBA can be used to compile DLLs. The Office 2000 and Office XP Developer editions included a VBA editor that could be used for making DLLs for use as COM Addins.

This functionality was removed in later versions (2003 and 2007) with the advent of the VSTO (VS Tools for Office) software, although obviously you could still create COM addins in a similar fashion without the use of VSTO (or VS.Net) by using VB6 IDE.

User · Answer

VB is not a language  VB is a program that hosts VBA  just as Office hosts VBA  VB is a set of App objects  just like Word and Excel have  and a forms package  just like in Office   So you can only write VBA code in VB   PS this info is on the INFO tab on the VB question page for VB   From VBA Info     VBA 6  was shipped in 1998 and includes a myriad of licensed hosts  among them  Office 2000 - 2010  AutoCAD  PI Processbook  and the stand-alone Visual Basic 6 0

User · Answer

It s VBA  VBA means Visual Basic for Applications  and it is used for macros on Office documents  It doesn t have access to VB NET features  so it s more like a modified version of VB6  with add-ons to be able to work on the document  like Worksheet in VBA for Excel

User · Answer

VB  Visual Basic only up to 6 0  is a superset of VBA  Visual Basic for Applications   I know that others have sort of eluded to this but my understanding is that the semantics  i e  the vocabulary  of VBA is included in VB6  except for objects specific to Office products   therefore  VBA is a subset of VB6  The syntax  i e  the order in which the words are written  is exactly the same in VBA as it would be in VB6  but the difference is the objects available to VBA or VB6 are different because they have different purposes  Specifically VBA s purpose is to programatically automate tasks that can be done in MS Office  whereas VB6 s purpose is to create standard EXE  ActiveX Controls  ActiveX DLLs and ActiveX EXEs which can either work stand alone or in other programs such as MS Office or Windows

User · Answer

Here s a more technical and thorough answer to an old question  Visual Basic for Applications  VBA  and Visual Basic  pre- NET  are not just similar languages  they are the same language  Specifically    They have the same specification  The implementation-independent description of what the language contains and what it means  You can read it here   MS-VBAL   VBA Language Specification They have the same platform  They both compile to Microsoft P-Code  which is in turn executed by the exact same virtual machine  which is implemented in the dll msvbvm x 0  dll     In an old VB reference book I came across last year  the author  Paul Lomax  even asserted that  VBA  has always been the name of the language itself  whether used in stand-alone applications or in embedded contexts  such as MS Office        Before we go any further  let s just clarify on fundamental point  Visual Basic for Applications  VBA  is the language used to program in Visual Basic  VB   VB itself is a development environment  the language element of that environment is VBA     The minor differences  Hosted vs  stand-alone  In practical  terms  when most people say  VBA  they specifically mean  VBA when used in MS Office   and they say  VB6  to mean  VBA used in the last version of the standalone VBA compiler  i e  Visual Studio 6    The IDE and compiler bundled with MS Office is almost identical to Visual Studio 6  with the limitation that it does not allow compilation to stand-alone dll or exe files  This in turns means that classes defined in embedded VBA projects are not accessible from non-embedded COM consumers  because they cannot be registered   Continued development  Microsoft stopped producing a stand-alone VBA compiler with Visual Studio 6  as they switched to the  NET runtime as the platform of choice  However  the MS Office team continues to maintain VBA  and even released a new version  VBA7  with a new VM  now just called VBA7 dll  starting with MS Office 2010  The only major difference is that VBA7 has both a 32- and 64-bit version and has a few enhancements to handle the differences between the two  specifically with regards to external API invocations

User · Answer

VBA stands for Visual Basic For Applications and its a Visual Basic implementation intended to be used in the Office Suite   The difference between them is that VBA is embedded inside Office documents  its an Office feature   VB is the ide language for developing applications

User · Answer

Do you want compare VBA with VB-Classic  VB6    or VB NET   VBA  Visual Basic for Applications  is a vb-classic-based script language embedded in Microsoft Office applications  I think it s language features are similar to those of VB5  it just lacks some few builtin functions   but   You have access to the office document you wrote the VBA-script for and so you can e g    Write macros   automated routines for little recurring tasks in your office-work  Define new functions for excel-cell-formula Process office data   Example  Set the value of an excel-cell  ActiveSheet Cells  A1   Value    Foo    VBC and - NET are no script languages  You use them to write standalone-applications with separate IDE s which you can t do with VBA  VBA-scripts just  exist  in Office   VBA has nothing to do with VB NET  they just have a similar syntax

User · Answer

For nearly all programming purposes  VBA and VB 6 0 are the same thing   VBA cannot compile your program into an executable binary  You ll always need the host  a Word file and MS Word  for example  to contain and execute your project  You ll also not be able to create COM DLLs with VBA   Apart from that  there is a difference in the IDE - the VB 6 0 IDE is more powerful in comparison  On the other hand  you have tight integration of the host application in VBA  Application-global objects  like  ActiveDocument   and events are available without declaration  so application-specific programming is straight-forward   Still  nothing keeps you from firing up Word  loading the VBA IDE and solving a problem that has no relation to Word whatsoever  I m not sure if there is anything that VB 6 0 can do  technically   and VBA cannot  I m looking for a comparison sheet on the MSDN though

User · Answer

VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications and so is the small  quot for applications quot  scripting brother of VB  VBA is indeed available in Excel  but also in the other office applications  With VB  one can create a stand-alone windows application  which is not possible with VBA  It is possible for developers however to  quot embed quot  VBA in their own applications  as a scripting language to automate those applications  Edit  From the VBA FAQ   Q  What is Visual Basic for Applications  A  Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications  VBA  is an embeddable programming environment designed to enable developers to build custom solutions using the full power of Microsoft Visual Basic  Developers using applications that host VBA can automate and extend the application functionality  shortening the development cycle of custom business solutions   Note that VB NET is even another language  which only shares syntax with VB

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