Use Visual Studio 2005 or use VBA in Access or Excel?

I am looking for some direction as to how to begin a new project.

I am wondering if it would be better to try and use Access or Excel along with VBA to do this project of if I should use VS.NET 2005.

What I would like to do is make a proggy similar to QuickBooks. When I downloaded QuickBooks and ran it on trial, I noticed it looked like someone took Access and created a custom form for it.

I want the program to be able to keep track of an inventory that will be able to handle being updated. I would also like it to create reports and send them out to either be printed or maybe into another app like Excel.

The program will need to also handle sales receipts and keep track of past sales.

I am guessing my best bet would be to learn Access and VBA to do this, but I am wondering if this would be better done in VB.NET 2005

Any information or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much in advance.

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Use Visual Studio 2005 or use VBA in Access or Excel?

Bernd Wechner
This is why microsoft products are better. Theres actual support and people that want to help others.

When I tried to learn Java, there were guys on the java sun forums putting people down and actually trying to deter people from learning programming.

Thanks for the helpful information!
Brian Noyes
The VSTO looks promissing, and I'm pretty sure most of the MS staff here suggest you to go in this way. (I spent the last 3 months in developing a VSTO 2005 solution, and I still face various problem everyday; while I think I can complete this project and got lots of support/forums if I go with the VBA approach in the very beginning :(

Also, I developed both VBA and VSTO 2005 solutions and faced lots of problem in VSTO 2005. What I can say is : VSTO 2005 is an immature technology, the casting of hosting controls and native Excel object will give you lots of problem, just for an example. It's not mature as VBA, and the deployment and FULL TRUST security control in VSTO 2005 is another problem. So I'd suggest you to go with the VBA approach if possible, and it can be easily deployed by copy and paste the file to network share directly.

Peter
AMGOT
There is no trial version of VSTO. You can, however, download a trial version of Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). VSTO is included with VSTS. Here's the link:

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite 180-Day Trial

The 180 Day Trial Edition is a time-limited, but fully functional, version of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite. It also includes a time-limited and fully functional version of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server.

Hope this helps!

Mike Hernandez
Community Program Manager
VSTO Team
SquireToad
If there are other issues regarding VSTO that are of concern to you, please feel free to contact me at Mike.Hernandez@microsoft.com.

Thanks!

Mike Hernandez
Community Program Manager
VSTO Team
SyncMobile
Both VBA and VSTO are viable technologies for building Office application solutions. Although VBA is not going away, VSTO 2005 removes the problems (pertaining to security and code versioning, for example) that were related to code within the documents. The complete syntax of managed code in the form of VB .NET and C# also provide a richer development experience when compared to VBA.

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System is the second version of the product and includes many new features that are robust and powerful. Developers gain the complete power of the .NET Framework, including a rich VB .NET and C# coding experience, use of a huge selection of managed controls, improved deployment and maintenance of solutions, improved security and the natural ability to consume and expose XML Web services and line of business systems directly from Excel, Word and InfoPath documents and templates and Outlook Add-ins.

VSTO 2005 solutions reduce end-user training and provide familiar user interfaces. For example, developers can take full advantage of Excel's calculation and presentation features, Word's document formatting and text management features, and InfoPath’s information gathering and XML management features. They can also extend Outlook’s email, calendar, task and contact functionality.

Please be sure to take advantage of perusing through the on-line VSTO Help documentation and MSDN technical articles to learn more about what VSTO can do. You can find links to these items in the PLEASE READ NEXT: VSTO 2005 Resource List post.

Thanks!

Mike Hernandez
Community Program Manager
VSTO Team
Thomas Weiss
Is there a way to get the Visual Studio Tools for Office for free or on a trial

I didn't realize they were a seperate entity. It seems the only way to use them is to purchase them.
Carlos F
Thanks so much all for the invaluable information regarding this.
mselman
This is not always true... I can use ActiveSheet command easily in VBA in order to get the current / active worksheet, but this can't be done in VSTO 2.0, FYI: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=220721&SiteID=1&mode=1

You really have to think again if you want to choose VSTO over VBA.. it's immature.
nicg
Moreover, I have nearly 80-100 information workers, who're using various version of MS Office (97, 2000, XP, 2003)... while only 10% use Office 2003, that mean... I still thinking an excuse to ask the MIS manager to purchase & upgrade all MS Office throughout my company, in order to use my VSTO 2005 application.
Chappers23
Hehe, nothing like instilling some fear in me. I am thinking you are right, that using VBA in Access or Excel would be easier and probably allow me to finish the project sooner. The only thing I don't like about the idea of sticking with an Office app and VBA is that I would have to make sure Office was installed in the machine I wanted to use the custom Access database on. Unless there is something I am not aware of.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Use Visual Studio 2005 or use VBA in Access or Excel?

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