Difference between Visual Basic 6.0 and VBA

Question

What is the difference between the two. I always thought VBA is somewhat 'crippled' version of VB, but when a friend asked me the other day I had no idea what the actual differences are.

Also, when you use, for example, Excel, is that VB or VBA ?

Answer 1

VBA stands for Visual Basic For Applications and its a Visual Basic implementation intended to be used in the Office Suite.

The difference between them is that VBA is embedded inside Office documents (its an Office feature). VB is the ide/language for developing applications.

Answer 2

VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications and so is the small "for applications" scripting brother of VB. VBA is indeed available in Excel, but also in the other office applications.

With VB, one can create a stand-alone windows application, which is not possible with VBA.

It is possible for developers however to "embed" VBA in their own applications, as a scripting language to automate those applications.

Edit: From the VBA FAQ:

Q. What is Visual Basic for Applications?

A. Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an embeddable programming environment designed to enable developers to build custom solutions using the full power of Microsoft Visual Basic. Developers using applications that host VBA can automate and extend the application functionality, shortening the development cycle of custom business solutions.

Note that VB.NET is even another language, which only shares syntax with VB.

Answer 3

It's VBA. VBA means Visual Basic for Applications, and it is used for macros on Office documents. It doesn't have access to VB.NET features, so it's more like a modified version of VB6, with add-ons to be able to work on the document (like Worksheet in VBA for Excel).

Answer 4

Here's a more technical and thorough answer to an old question: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Visual Basic (pre-.NET) are not just similar languages, they are the same language. Specifically:

• They have the same specification: The implementation-independent description of what the language contains and what it means. You can read it here: [MS-VBAL]: VBA Language Specification
• They have the same platform: They both compile to Microsoft P-Code, which is in turn executed by the exact same virtual machine, which is implemented in the dll msvbvm[x.0].dll.

In an old VB reference book I came across last year, the author (Paul Lomax) even asserted that 'VBA' has always been the name of the language itself, whether used in stand-alone applications or in embedded contexts (such as MS Office):

"Before we go any further, let's just clarify on fundamental point. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the language used to program in Visual Basic (VB). VB itself is a development environment; the language element of that environment is VBA."

The minor differences

Hosted vs. stand-alone: In practical, terms, when most people say "VBA" they specifically mean "VBA when used in MS Office", and they say "VB6" to mean "VBA used in the last version of the standalone VBA compiler (i.e. Visual Studio 6)". The IDE and compiler bundled with MS Office is almost identical to Visual Studio 6, with the limitation that it does not allow compilation to stand-alone dll or exe files. This in turns means that classes defined in embedded VBA projects are not accessible from non-embedded COM consumers, because they cannot be registered.

Continued development: Microsoft stopped producing a stand-alone VBA compiler with Visual Studio 6, as they switched to the .NET runtime as the platform of choice. However, the MS Office team continues to maintain VBA, and even released a new version (VBA7) with a new VM (now just called VBA7.dll) starting with MS Office 2010. The only major difference is that VBA7 has both a 32- and 64-bit version and has a few enhancements to handle the differences between the two, specifically with regards to external API invocations.

Answer 5

Actually VBA can be used to compile DLLs. The Office 2000 and Office XP Developer editions included a VBA editor that could be used for making DLLs for use as COM Addins.

This functionality was removed in later versions (2003 and 2007) with the advent of the VSTO (VS Tools for Office) software, although obviously you could still create COM addins in a similar fashion without the use of VSTO (or VS.Net) by using VB6 IDE.

Answer 6

VB (Visual Basic only up to 6.0) is a superset of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). I know that others have sort of eluded to this but my understanding is that the semantics (i.e. the vocabulary) of VBA is included in VB6 (except for objects specific to Office products), therefore, VBA is a subset of VB6. The syntax (i.e. the order in which the words are written) is exactly the same in VBA as it would be in VB6, but the difference is the objects available to VBA or VB6 are different because they have different purposes. Specifically VBA's purpose is to programatically automate tasks that can be done in MS Office, whereas VB6's purpose is to create standard EXE, ActiveX Controls, ActiveX DLLs and ActiveX EXEs which can either work stand alone or in other programs such as MS Office or Windows.