Poll: Do you use VBA in your Excel files?
I just added a poll to the sidebar on the right (RSS readers might need to visit the site to see it). I’d like to know if you use recorded macros or write VBA in Excel.
I ran an informal poll among friends and colleagues with catastrophic results and I’d like to compare results.
Please add a comment to your vote.
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I make a lot of use of macros in spreadsheets for my own use, but have problems with macros in spreadsheets for clients as they are often put off by the initial macro warning, so most spreadsheets that I develop for others use do not have macros. It is a pity, because the spreadsheets are much more powerful with a few macros.
My business is based on what I do in Excel VBA. The macro warning is not an issue usually, because the code is packaged in add-ins which are manually or programmatically installed, or in templates which are programmatically loaded.
I use VBA quite a lot, especially for user-defined functions. However, if I am doing work for others I try to avoid them for the same reason that Jay mentioned.
I know that this is an informal survey, but you are likely to get some skewed results from asking this question of your computer-savvy audience.
@Jay: yes, the macro warning can be really scary for many users. Once I had a phone call from a user because he was opening my file and he was getting a message from the antivirus software…
@Jon: could you share your experience regarding the installation of add-ins in a large organization? I don’t have that kind of experience and I feel that it can be a problem (adding it to single image deployments, IT dragging its feet..)
@Tim: I have another informal survey (I’ll talk about it in the next post) and the results are remarkably different… But if the results of these surveys are representative of the blog readers that can help me to improve the blog.