I am finding a need to develop my VB primarily for Excel, but also to create addins to combine Excel datasources with Outlook for calendar entries etc...

I have been advised to try using Visual Basic, and went ahead and bought VB.Net 2003. I should have looked at Excel more closely though, as far as I can tell, the VB behind Excel is different from VB 2003. Is this correct?

Excel has .NET capabilities, so how is VB pitched within it? Is is VB 6 with some .NET bells and whistles? How does it compare to VB .NET 2003? And if I am learning VB from scratch, should I jump into the latest version now? Input and comments would be most welcome...

Thanks!

You probably want to look into Visual Studio Tools for Office. I haven't worked with them, but they provide some pretty neat ways for writing .NET applications that provide data or do things within an office application. You can make an excel spreadsheet calls .NET methods you write to give you data and do things within the spreadsheet.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/of...ficetools.aspx

-Peter

I've found myself having to develop a program that digs around in several Excel workbooks for data, so I had to learn to use the Excel Object Model really, really fast. It's a bit of a nightmare. You really want to check out these two sites:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...plications.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...l/ExcelObj.asp

They, along with a lot of trial & error, are great learning tools! As for the VB behind Excel being different, it is. Excel uses Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is a bit different from regular VB.

-RK

You can develop in .NET what are called assemblies, which can then be used by Excel.

Some call VB.NET VB.NOT . . . It is certainly different.