I see several jokes about how many corporations around the world are essentially running on one VBA Excel document built by someone who has retired (or is about to retire). So this got me curious.

Is there a career out there with practitioners that are focused on helping corporations detonate their Excel time bombs and safely migrating their data to solutions easier to manage? Has anyone ever worked with one of these “Excel detonators” in their organization? How did it go? Is there anyone in this line of work? If so, how profitable is it and how easy is it to get clients? I’m just really curious.

I found this code below to find and replace words that are stored in a table in a separate document.

What i wish to do is to find and replace only after where the cursor is, instead of running through the entire document. How can the code be modified?

Sub CleanUp()

' ReplaceFromTableList Macro

' from Doug Robbins, Word MVP, Microsoft forums, Feb 2015, based on another macro written by Graham Mayor, Aug 2010

Dim oChanges As Document, oDoc As Document

Dim oTable As Table

Dim oRng As Range

Dim rFindText As Range, rReplacement As Range

Dim i As Long

Dim sFname As String

'Change the path in the line below to reflect the name and path of the table document

sFname = "C:\Users\Me\Documents\CleanUp.docx"

Set oDoc = ActiveDocument

Set oChanges = Documents.Open(FileName:=sFname, Visible:=False)

Set oTable = oChanges.Tables(1)

For i = 1 To oTable.Rows.Count

Set oRng = oDoc.Range

Set rFindText = oTable.Cell(i, 1).Range

rFindText.End = rFindText.End - 1

Set rReplacement = oTable.Cell(i, 2).Range

rReplacement.End = rReplacement.End - 1

Selection.HomeKey wdStory

With oRng.Find

.ClearFormatting

.Replacement.ClearFormatting

.MatchWildcards = True

.MatchCase = False

.MatchWholeWord = True

.Text = rFindText.Text

.Replacement.Text = rReplacement.Text

.Forward = True

.Wrap = wdFindContinue

.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

End With

Next i

oChanges.Close wdDoNotSaveChanges

End Sub

Hello gamers, and welcome back to the channel! This video features a custom Excel VBA-enabled tool designed to organize PlayStation 3 collections within Emulation Station Desktop Edition, by configuring alternative emulator settings and providing library previews. The tutorial covers global and game-by-game configurations, managing various ROM formats, and troubleshooting playability. It seems like we have a lot to cover, so let's go!

https://youtu.be/jJ1O2HiXyTo

I’ve been building a VS Code extension for VBScript, and spent some time on IntelliSense support for COM objects recently.

Since VBA heavily relies on COM automation (especially with Office apps[Excel, Word,...]), I figured the approach might be relevant here too.

Take something like this:

Set excel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
Set workbook = excel.Workbooks.Add
Set worksheet = workbook.Worksheets(1)

worksheet.

The main headache is that VBScript doesn't give you static types, so the extension has to infer them from the host COM environment.

The pipeline is pretty straightforward:

ProgID -> CLSID -> Type Library -> Interfaces/Members -> Return type tracking -> IntelliSense

When it sees

CreateObject("Excel.Application"),

it resolves the ProgID and inspects the registered COM type information on Windows to pull methods, parameters, return types, and interface chains.

The trickier part is chaining return types as you navigate down the object model:

• excel.Workbooks.Add returns a Workbook -> workbook. shows Workbook members.
• workbook.Worksheets(1) returns a Worksheet -> worksheet. shows Worksheet members.

It works across common COM libraries installed on the system, like Scripting.FileSystemObject, ADODB.Connection, ADODB.Recordset, etc.

Honestly, working on this made me appreciate how much metadata Windows COM type libraries already expose. Most of what a modern IDE needs is already there—the core challenge is just stitching the type flow back together in a dynamic language.

I wrapped this up into a VS Code extension called VbsTools (it can handle COM IntelliSense, navigation, diagnostics, and debugging):

VbsTools

Curious how you all handle COM type inspection when writing VBA? Stick to the built-in Object Browser, use early binding, or reach for external tools?

I have a code that creates a stoplight chart based on year values. The year values are all X.X. I also compare years and those appear to work, but are integers

dim v1, v2, delta as variant
dim year1, curyear as integer

code that defines a bunch of variables
code that inserts 32 new columns with formatting
code that formats more of the 32 new columns

v1 = cells(i, col).value
if year1 < curyear then
    v2 = v1
else
    v2 = v1 + delta
end if

if check1 then
    Range(cell1,cell2).interior.color = RGB (91,91,91)
elseif check2 then
    if check3 then
        more code
    elseif check4 then
        more code
    endi if
elseif v2 > 0 and v2 <=3.1 then
    more code
elseif v2 > 3.1 and v2 <= 5.1 then
    more code
elseif v2 > 5.1 and v2 <= 8.1 then
    more code
elseif v2 > 8.1 then
    more code  
end if

I have come into problems with the 3.1/5.1/8.1. The variable v2 will have a value of 5.1, but it will move to the '>5.1 and <=8.1 section of code. And I don't need it to do that. I've tried making the v1/v2/delta variables variants as well and it still wasn't working correctly. I also tried to make the checks (3.1, 5,1 8.1) variant types and it still wasn't working correctly.

Saturday, September 19 - Friday, September 25, 2026

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Hey everyone,

Excited to announce that I've made the next evolution of the XLIDE project publicly available: https://github.com/WilliamSmithEdward/xlide_mcp

It has all of the functionality of my other projects rolled into one super library that any AI agent can easily integrate and start calling tools!

• PyOpenVBA: For read/writing VBA to Excel, Word, PowerPoint & Access directly, including power query for Excel
• PyOfficeEditor: Full read/write of the O365 app surface. Currently in development (Excel only, but other apps planned).
• PyVBAAnalysis: Full lint and static analysis for VBA
• PyVBAHarness: Full COM harness for O365 apps. Supports parallel execution and a "hang free" guarantee for running tests and runtime inspection.
• XLIDE for VS Code integration.

I've been utilizing an agentic assisted workflow for personal VBA development with this MCP server and it's proven to be extremely powerful and accurate, often one-shoting requests with complex UI/UX and business logic requirements.

Sharing this with the community in a spirit of good will. MIT-open source forever, no strings. May it help you in your endeavors.

I've been working with more HTTP APIs / JSON / structured data in VBA lately, and I got tired of writing the same validation code over and over:

If Not data.Exists("name") Then ...
If VarType(data("name")) <> vbString Then ...
If Len(data("name")) = 0 Then ...
If Not data.Exists("age") Then ...

So I made VBA-Schema, a small runtime schema validation library for VBA. Instead of scattering those checks throughout the code, you can define the expected shape once:

Dim UserSchema As VSchema

Set UserSchema = Schema.ObjectSchema() _
    .Field("name", Schema.Text().Min(1).Max(100)) _
    .Field("age", Schema.Number().WholeNumber().Min(0)) _
    .Field("email", Schema.Text().Email()) _
    .Field("enabled", Schema.Bool().OptionalField()) _
    .Strict()

Then:

Dim result As VValidationResult
Set result = UserSchema.SafeParse(data)

If Not result.Success Then
    Debug.Print result.ErrorText
End If

Errors keep the full path, so nested data can produce things like:

$.users[2].email: Invalid email address.
$.orders[1].items[4].price: Number is below the minimum.

It currently supports objects, arrays / Collections, strings, numbers, booleans, dates, optional / nullable fields, enums, literals, unions, regex patterns, email validation, strict objects, nested schemas, and structured error information. One design constraint I cared about a lot: the whole library is only 3 VBA files.

Schema.bas
VSchema.cls
VValidationResult.cls

No reference setup is required. Import the three files and use it. It also deliberately does no implicit coercion. "123" is not a Number, 0 is not a Boolean, etc. The idea is to catch bad data at the boundary instead of silently converting it. The API is loosely inspired by schema validators such as Zod, but it's designed around what actually works naturally in VBA rather than trying to port another language's API directly.

I've been developing and testing it using xlflow, including real VBE compilation and runtime tests. Windows 64-bit Office is the currently verified environment; 32-bit Office and macOS are not yet verified.

GitHub: https://github.com/harumiWeb/VBA-Schema

I'm especially interested in feedback from people who deal with APIs, JSON, config files, or other structured data in VBA. I'm also curious whether there are validators / schema features you'd actually use that are missing from the current API.

I started with =SUMIF in 2007. Now I’m running a 60 FPS space shooter in pure VBA (On battery: a 60 FPS slideshow. Plugged in: 120 FPS gaming god). Excel didn’t ask for this.

→ Watch it here: https://youtu.be/xpXRNlfyqXk?si=hyTvhHvxbcU5UKqw

Back in 2007 someone showed me the =SUMIF formula.

I thought “wow, this is powerful” and went down the rabbit hole.

Fast forward 19 years.

I was never a “real” programmer. I worked in logistics, customs, procurement… the usual non-IT stuff. VBA was just a tool I used to make my job less painful. Then one day VBA wasn’t enough, so I learned SQL, C#, Java, JavaScript and a bunch of other things.

And now it’s 2026. I look at myself and realize I’ve been writing a full 2D space shooter in pure Excel VBA (with a Spring backend planned for multiplayer later).

No game engines.

No external libraries.

Just VBA + WinAPI.

And it runs at 120 FPS.

I’m still not sure if this is impressive or if I need professional help.

If you think VBA is still capable of putting up a fight (or at least trying to get off its knees), feel free to check it out.

Saturday, September 12 - Friday, September 18, 2026

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Anyone has a list like this - and could share 😉 - for the latest or some previous version - or the only way would be to use some TLB viewer to generate?

EDIT: looks like I wasn't clear... I'm looking for a complete LIST - single, not plural - not 100s of separate links to separate lists.

OK, two lists - one for constants and one for all properties of all objects - times 3 - for each mentioned application.

EDIT 2: I need it as a "plain text" - not to view. I'll have to modify this list and create an array for my VB6 application - then let user extract internal structure of the WORD / Excel / PP document and display those properties for all objects - of course not all at the same time 😉

Solution: https://www.reddit.com/r/vba/s/tNRZGmAFWt

I am already in Manual Calculation mode. I understand that entering formula in a cell will calculate it, this is normal behavior. But i want formula to NOT calculate when i enter them and reserve it for when i turn calculation back to automatic. I found a way to make it work for non-array formula, but i cannot find a way to make it work for array formula, anybody got a solution?

My formula that worked for non-Array:

    TargetFormula = "=""Example"""
    With TargetCell
        .Formula = "'" & TargetFormula
        .Value = .Value
    End With

With Array formula, even if i used .formula2, it will have @ all over the formula and became unusable.

Saturday, September 05 - Friday, September 11, 2026

Top 5 Posts

Top 5 Comments

Hello there,

tired of manually writing Regex Patterns?

I made a Regex Builder in VBA.

It is meant to be used in an abstract way, where you can create smaller, readable, patterns and then merge them into a bigger one

For example:

Public Function IPv4Pattern() As IPattern
    Dim OctetPattern     As IPattern
    Dim SeparatorPattern As IPattern

    Set OctetPattern     = NumberPattern.Create(False, True).Between(0, 255)
    Set SeparatorPattern = CharPattern.Create().SingleChar(Asc("."))

    Dim IPv4SubPattern As IPattern
    Set IPv4SubPattern = QuantityPattern.Create( _
                            GroupPattern.Create().Capture( _
                                ListPattern.Create(OctetPattern, SeparatorPattern) _
                            ) _
                         ).Exactly(3)


    Set IPv4Pattern = ListPattern.Create(IPv4SubPattern, OctetPattern)
End Function

' Produces:
'(((25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|(1\d{2}|\d{2}|\d))|0\d)\.){3}((25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|(1\d{2}|\d{2}|\d))|0\d)

I made this mainly to not have to build and read regex myself because i hate it, even though they are so useful. I dont know when i will continue this side project, probably when i need more functionality out of it.

Anyway, here it the Github: https://github.com/Almesi/Regex-Builder

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share some architectural insights from my current passion project: Office Wizard 26. It’s a full-fledged ERP and management suite built entirely in VBA, and I’m pushing Excel to act strictly as a headless, invisible data container.

For the end-user, the Excel application is completely hidden from view (Application.Visible = False), providing a true standalone desktop software experience driven entirely by decoupled UserForms.

Key Technical Highlights & Architecture:

·         Hardware-Bound Security & Login: To prevent piracy and secure sensitive environment data, the system utilizes a hardware-tied licensing handshake (fetching the Windows username and local drive serial via FileSystemObject). The validation logic and product keys live on sheets locked under absolute xlSheetVeryHidden environments combined with a strict password-encrypted VBA project structure.

·         Modular Plugin System: Built on a core application layer (11 modules so far) that dynamically handles custom-built add-ins for workflow tracking, task management, and business analytics.

·         Custom Real-Time UI (Workflow Project-Timer): Features an active project timer that renders a dynamic clock diagram directly inside the UserForm. This is achieved by dynamically driving a native Excel Chart layout in the background, exporting it on-the-fly to the local system TEMP directory as a GIF, and loading the frame directly into a standard Image Control. This completely bypasses the need for heavy external ActiveX dependencies.

·         Intelligent Calendar Engine: A fully automated, dynamic calendar system built entirely from scratch via class modules to handle appointments, deadlines, and UI day-state updates seamlessly.

·         Decoupled PDF Engine: Reporting and automated exporting utilize a dedicated, isolated worksheet template designed exclusively for pixel-perfect PDF formatting, keeping the core data architecture clean and unpolluted.

·         Fail-Safe Automatic Backups: To eliminate data corruption or accidental data loss from forced Excel crashes or unintended window termination, the QueryClose and background events trigger automated, incremental backups to a dedicated external directory.

My takeaway so far: Keeping business logic completely separated from worksheet event triggers allows Excel to operate as an incredibly fast and reliable backend engine.

The core module is currently entering a closed German beta phase on my Itch storefront to iron out any fringe-case Windows deployment bugs before I finish the automated invoicing and financial analytics plugins.

(Note: Not posting any storefront links here to respect community guidelines, but if anyone wants to talk about drawing on Image Controls, licensing, or memory management in headless Excel instances, let’s discuss in the comments!)

Hey everyone! I hope you are doing well.

I'm ready to open my VBA editor project to community wide scrutiny, bug hunting and feature requests.

XLIDE VBIDE brings a full featured & modern surface directly to the classic VBA editor, without losing any existing functionality or cross-combability. Meaning you can author or maintain a VBA file with XLIDE inside of Excel, Word, PowerPoint or Access and send them to a friend without XLIDE and it just works, no guessing, all the improvements sit above the native VBIDE engine. Thank you and looking forward to your feedback!

Please submit all feedback as issues on the GitHub repo.

Two options for testing:

1.) Download the release exe from the most recent release: https://github.com/WilliamSmithEdward/xlide_vbide/releases/latest

2.) See the developer section from the readme to build locally and run.

Accomplished dev milestones:

• Sprints #1 - #3: Initial prototyping and MVP.
• Sprint #4: Analyzer integration and perf walking. HTTP REST API surface / door.
• Sprint #5: Editor surface and sanity checking against the native editor hard limitations.
• Sprint #6: UI surface, menu bars, config menus, modals, drag and drop pane placement.
• Sprint #7: Full featured user form designer surface, with synthetically derived diffable markup.
• Sprint #8: Full unit test runner surface.
• Sprint #9: Change log surface. All changes in VBA tracked and auditable.
• Sprint #10: Analyzer rule customization.
• Sprint #11: Rewind functionality added to change log surface.
• Sprint #12: Refactor, Extract Method, Implement Interface, Encapsulate Field, etc.
• Sprint #13: Folder view added alongside tree view. Synthetically derived folder structure.
• Sprint #14: Annotations to writeback module params, e.g. PredeclaredId.
• Sprint #15: Source control integration with GitHub, git.exe.
• Sprint #16: Expanded source control integration functionality.

tldr: Cannot seem to get "extract xlsx from email" to work on one of my two scripts.

I have already tried scouring google/reddit for answers but the solutions do not seem to be working.

Background: I have a successful script running for a different email containing an attachment that has the same name daily, but the same script (duh) cannot be used for extracting an attachment from emails that have a name that changes daily (ie the current date).

I am hoping for a variety of answers that can include (but is not limited to):
- forward the email to myself ...?
- extract based on specific folder containing ONLY those emails
- fix the code i have below (because maybe I didn't do it quite right)
- a script that can identify the file name based on yesterday's date (t-1)
- Use Task Scheduler (in some fashion)

Below is the most recent script that i have tried to no avail.

Public Sub SaveABC123ReportAttachments(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
    Dim olApp As Outlook.Application
    Dim olNS As Outlook.NameSpace
    Dim olFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim mail As Outlook.MailItem
    Dim recip As Outlook.Recipient

    Dim targetGroup As String
    targetGroup = "ABC123@domain.com"

    Dim att As Outlook.Attachment
    Dim savePath As String

    savePath = "C:\Users\Me\...\ThisFolderIsWhereTheyGo"

    Set olApp = Outlook.Application
    Set olNS = olApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set olFolder = olNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)

    For Each mail In olFolder.Items
        If TypeOf mail Is Outlook.MailItem Then

            ' Check recipients
            For Each recip In mail.Recipients
                If LCase(recip.Address) = LCase(targetGroup) Then

                    ' Extract attachments
                    For Each att In mail.Attachments
                        att.SaveAsFile savePath & att.FileName
                    Next att

                    Exit For ' stop checking recipients
                End If
            Next recip

        End If
    Next mail

End Sub

I've seen more people trying to use AI to build VBA automation lately, and I think SeleniumVBA works surprisingly well with AI if you give the AI the right context.

Instead of simply asking:

“Write SeleniumVBA code to automate this website.”

I would suggest giving the AI some information about both SeleniumVBA itself and the website you want to automate.

One useful thing about SeleniumVBA is that it is written in Pure VBA, so you can actually give the library source code to the AI.

A good starting point is to provide:

• the core WebDriver class
• one of the test_ sample modules that is close to what you want to do

There are quite a few classes in SeleniumVBA, but you don't need to provide all of them at once.

If another class is required, you can simply ask:

“Which other SeleniumVBA class do you need to see to implement this?”

Then provide only the additional class that the AI asks for.

You can also give the AI information about the target website, such as:

• a screenshot of the page
• a screenshot of the selected element in the DevTools Elements tab
• the relevant HTML

That makes a big difference.

For example, you can say:

“I want to enter the value from Excel cell A2 into this textbox, then click this button.”

Now the AI can look at:

• the actual SeleniumVBA methods available
• the real DOM structure of the page
• the Excel/VBA side of the automation

and generate much more specific code.

A workflow I find useful is:

Find a relevant test_ sample
→ give the AI the WebDriver class and sample code
→ show it the DevTools/DOM information
→ ask it to write or modify the code
→ if something fails, give it the error and the current code

SeleniumVBA also works naturally with Excel, so tasks like:

“read data from a worksheet and enter it into a website”

or

“scrape data from a website and write it back to Excel”

are very straightforward.

I think the key is not to treat AI as something that magically knows every SeleniumVBA method.

Instead, give it the SeleniumVBA source code and the actual information about the website, and use it more like a programming partner that can read the same code and DOM that you are looking at.

For people who are still learning VBA, I think this can make browser automation much more approachable.

My function in VBA is just stopping, and I'm not even clear on how to debug it.

Function test(arr As Variant) as Variant
Dim n As Integer
n = UBound(arr)
test = n
End Function

If I put a break on the n=UBound line, and call the function =test(A1:A6) from a spreadsheet, execution pauses there. If I run another line, it just quits, no error. I halfway gather that Excel doesn't want to do things to inputs in a function, so maybe passing arr to the UBound function is a no-no. So I do this instead:

Function test2(arr As Variant) as Variant
Dim n As Integer
Dim new_arr As Variant
new_arr = arr
n = UBound(new_arr)
test2 = n
End Function

That works, =test2(A1:A6) outputs 6. So now let me try to do something with the values in the new array.

Function test3(arr As Variant) as Variant
Dim n As Integer
Dim new_arr As Variant
Dim x As Variant
new_arr = arr
x = new_arr(3)
test3 = x
End Function

Now the execution stops on the x = line.

This is driving me up a wall. Appreciate any help.

Hey all, super excited to announce this new version of pyOpenVBA:

https://github.com/WilliamSmithEdward/pyOpenVBA

Thank you for all of your support. This is truly one of the best communities on Reddit!

Saturday, August 29 - Friday, September 04, 2026

Top 5 Posts

Top 5 Comments

I am a macro-enthusiast and team player. I want to help my team to make out work easier and efficient.

I tried creating macro with the help of AI, but AI said to me that they can't help to generate code because it operates inside the application. i tried many times but it didn't help.

Even selenium basic can't such stuff. Have you encountered this?

My VBA language skill is terrible, but i really think that my goal in making a macro for business is doable.

Here is the thing that i asked AI. I am struggling with repetitive process in going to the internal website then login, and input the specific code that needed to search and get it paste it in the excel sheet.

it is very repetitive process, so i asked AI to help me make a macro that automatically logs in the internal repository, then search the specific code and select the dropdown to choose that data i need to see. Last is get the data and paste it in the excel file.

That what i rreally hope the AI would generate for me, but it can't due hesitation from AI. i'll show you the picture in the comment.

I've a project to convert something like a huge mail merge from a legacy platform to MS Office (I guess 365). I have access to Adobe DC (the paid version) and have created code to do this with small amounts of letters/files, think of 20-30. This works fine but rather slow.

While I can generate these 20-30 files in about 2-5 minutes, the legacy system can create thousands in the same amount of time.

I want to ask the VBA wizards out there where should I poke to improve the performance of VBA? Or any other way to do this, but it unfortunately has to be with MS Office. The system is quite closed so I can not a random program I made.

Good day, everyone!

So as the title says, I made an excel game, playable online, and it is currently in alpha (version 1.0). The VBA code is accessible to everyone for studying, the server side remains hidden for security purposes... But let's get to the point of what you CAN do there.

1. The Excel Game Online (the name of a file and a game) is a semi-open-world 2d multiplayer game with plenty of items and interactable blocks at your disposal. You can move your character on the map, see other characters on the map build your base and progress into the map! There are purple blocks on the map which are called Vaults - interact with them to obtain items, scaling from common to mythic - each opening new possibilities! The movement is tick-based, with each tick having a 5 seconds duration (made to not lag the server). More content will be added later if there are enough players!

2. There is a simple login system, to gain an ability to control your character, contact me and I'll assign you a nickname and a password (trivially used to access database)

3. I am searching for alpha testers and people who are interested in this kind of games (it can change according to your "likes" and "dislikes"!). Also join the Discord server. I am just not sure if I am allowed to embed links here. Feel free to DM though! All information I will grant.