Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment (IDE), which are built into most Microsoft Office applications. Visual Basic for Applications enables building user defined functions, automating processes and accessing Windows API and other low-level functionality through dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). It is also built into Office for Mac applications (apart from version 2008) and other Microsoft applications such as Microsoft MapPoint and Microsoft Visio, as well as being at least partially implemented in other applications such as AutoCAD, WordPerfect and ArcGIS. It supersedes and expands on the abilities of earlier application-specific macro programming languages such as Word's WordBasic. It can be used to control many aspects of the host application, including manipulating user interface features, such as menus and toolbars, and working with custom user forms or dialog boxes.
As its name suggests, VBA is closely related to Visual Basic and uses the Visual Basic Runtime Library, but can normally only run code within a host application rather than as a standalone program. It can, however, be used to control one application from another via OLE Automation. For example, it is used to automatically create a Word report from Excel data, which is in turn automatically collected by Excel from polled observation sensors.
VBA has the ability to use (but not create) (ActiveX/COM) DLLs, and later versions add support for class modules.
Read more about Visual Basic For Applications: Language, Automation, Security Concerns, Future
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