Nora Najem said:
I started getting lessons in VB.net, and my main purpose is to be able to
write code in Microsoft Office application like Word and Excel. But as I
understand that VB.net in not a continuation of VB6 but differ entirely.
My questions is:
Is there any difference in the language itself. and
Yes, there is a substantial difference. The following link provides a list
of changes between VB6 and VB.NET
http://www.mvps.org/vb/rants/vfred.htm
VB6 and VBA are very similar, except that they use a somewhat different
library for forms, so this list is a reasonable indication of the degree of
difference between VBA and VB.NET.
In addition, Microsoft has published a 500-page book on how to upgrade
projects from VB6 to VB.NET. Having read it, my conclusion is that it is
probably wiser not to try.
Shall the newer version of Office use VB.net.
VB.NET programs can be integrated with Office 2003 using Visual Studio Tools
for Office. But this appears to be more an attempt to make it easier for
..NET developers to use Office than for Office developers to use .NET.
No announcement has been made by Microsoft regarding a version of VB.NET
integrated into a future version of Office in the way that VBA is. Since
Microsoft appears to have had its fingers burned by the hullabaloo over
upgrading from VB6 to VB.NET, I suspect that they are having to be more
careful over VBA compatibility this time round. I wrote an article about
this a couple of years ago, and I still think its conclusions are
reasonable.
Office and .NET: Better Together?
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2002_08/magazine/departments/guestop/
I would expect that the next version of Office will be released towards the
end of 2005, and so we will probably start hearing about planned features in
the next month or two
