visual basic for applications

overview

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's Visual Basic, an event driven programming language and associated development environment which is built into most Microsoft Office applications (including Apple Mac OS versions). It supersedes and expands on the capabilities of earlier application-specific macro programming languages such as Word's WordBasic, and can be used to control almost all aspects of the host application, including manipulating user interface features such as menus and toolbars and working with custom user forms or dialog boxes. VBA can also be used to create import and export filters for various file formats, such as ODF.

VBA itself is an interpreted language. As its name suggests, VBA is closely related to Visual Basic, but can normally only run code from within a host application rather than as a standalone application. It can however be used to control one application from another using OLE Automation (for example, automatically creating a Word report from Excel data).

security

In VBA, most of the security features lie in the hands of the user, not the author. As with any programming language, there can be programs that are created with a malicious intent. Therefore it is recommended to safeguard your system with the following steps:

• Set your office software to use medium or high macro security.
• Only execute documents with macros if the author is known.
• Utilize real-time virus protection software.

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