VSTA, VSTO...what is going on? Confused Excel 2003 programmer

[dataCruncher]

So...can anyone give me some straight answers here? My head is spinning from
all the changes I'm reading about. And keep this in mind: I'm an Excel 2003
programmer. I do not yet own Office 2007.

What is the difference betweem VSTA and VSTO?
Can I still write Excel macros in VBA?
Do I have to use VSTA or VSTO?
Do I have to buy Visual Studio to program Excel 2007?
Can I program Excel with C#? Do I have to buy Visual Studio?
Is there a Macro Editor in Excel 2007...like the one in Excel 2003?
This is unrelated...How can I pull info from Access and into Excel or vice
versa?

 

[Clif McIrvin]

This is unrelated...How can I pull info from Access and into Excel or
vice
versa?

COM Automation.

There is frequent discussion of this topic in the
microsoft.public.access forum. It seems that MS was forced to drop the
ability to update Excel worksheets directly from Access, so to pull data
from Access to Excel one has to jump through some (coding) hoops but it
can be done.

In VBA you can access / manipulate / execute / etc the Access
application from Excel, and / or the Excel application from Access.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

What is the difference betweem VSTA and VSTO?

Can't help you with that one.

Can I still write Excel macros in VBA?
Yes.

Do I have to use VSTA or VSTO?

No, at least not if you want to keep doing the things you're already doing.

Do I have to buy Visual Studio to program Excel 2007?
No.

Can I program Excel with C#? Do I have to buy Visual Studio?

You can automate it with C#, yes. You'd almost surely need visual studio for
this.

 

[Norman Yuan]

So...can anyone give me some straight answers here? My head is spinning
from
all the changes I'm reading about. And keep this in mind: I'm an Excel
2003
programmer. I do not yet own Office 2007.

What is the difference betweem VSTA and VSTO?

VSTA is basically the .NET equivalent to VBA. It is built into an
application, just as VBA is built into MS Office applications (Excel,
Word...). However, it has not been built into Office2007 formally, not to
mention Office2003. So, you do not need worry about it if you work with
Office2003

VSTO is stand-alone development IDE for MS Office. VSTO's name itself has
been very confusing: it is add-on to Visual Studio 2003, and later became as
a complete suite in VS2005 family, and then VSTO2005SE (Second edition) was
add-on to VS2005/VSTO2005. IN VS2008, it is simply a fearutre only available
to VB2008Pro and above. Make it simple, regardless its confusing
version/name, it just a tool in Visual Studio200x designed to do MS Office
development, outside MS Office, but must work with MS Office together.

Can I still write Excel macros in VBA?
Yes.

Do I have to use VSTA or VSTO?

Do not know if you could find a way to use VSTA (I'd not bother anyway). For
VSTO, you can get VSTO2005 suite (with or without VSTO2005SE), VS2005 Pro +
VSTO2005SE, or VS2008Pro.

However, if you only have Excel2003/MSOffice 2003, you MUST use either
stand-alone Excel2003 or MS Office2003Pro edition. Excel2003 from MS Office
Standard/Basic edition cannot be used for VSTO development.

Do I have to buy Visual Studio to program Excel 2007?

You can use VSTO2005 suite or VS2005Pro suite (you have to buy, but I do not
know if they are still available, since VS2008 iwas already out near a year)
with VSTO2005SE added. Or you need to buy VS2008 Pro/Team edition

Can I program Excel with C#? Do I have to buy Visual Studio?

Yes, if you use VSTO, you can program with either C# or VB.NET

Is there a Macro Editor in Excel 2007...like the one in Excel 2003?

Do not know. But my guess would be yes.

This is unrelated...How can I pull info from Access and into Excel or vice
versa?

It can be easily done with or without code. In Excel's Data menu, you can
get external data, be it from MS Access or other database.

With code (VBA or VSTO), you can do even more powerful database
manipulation. Since you have already know VBA, you can fairly quickly learn
to use ADO to manipulate data from database in Excel (or other office
application). Find any out-of-date VB/VBA book with database programming,
read topics on ADO.