Do You Need to SWITCH from Excel VBA Macros to Office Scripts?

Dive into the world of Excel automation with our comprehensive comparison between Office Scripts and VBA Macros. Whether you're a seasoned programmer or a business user, this video is your gateway to efficient task automation in Excel.

✨ Key Highlights:
▪️ Office Scripts vs VBA: Understand the fundamental differences and their applications.
▪️ VBA in Action: Explore practical VBA examples for dynamic chart creation and complex data manipulation.
▪️ Office Scripts Tutorial: Navigate through Office Scripts with live examples, including recording actions and scripting in TypeScript.
▪️ Advanced Automation: Learn how to integrate Office Scripts with Power Automate for seamless Excel automation.

Office Scripts and VBA macros have a lot in common. They both allow users to automate solutions in Excel. The fundamental difference is that VBA macros are developed for desktop solutions and Office Scripts are designed for secure, cloud-based solutions. At the moment, Office Scripts are only supported in Excel on the web (and in Excel for Teams). The great thing about Office Scripts is that you can use Power Automate to run the script. So you can run your macro without even opening Excel.

00:00 Office Scripts Vs VBA Macros?
00:38 Differences Between VBA and Office Scripts
01:15 How to Use Excel VBA
04:26 How to Use Office Scripts
11:24 Trigger Office Scripts with Power Automate
11:52 Will Office Scripts Replace VBA Macros?
12:27 Wrap Up

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#excel #ExcelVBA #officescript

[Dragoninja]

OMG, I'm still trying to understand VBA, now I have to learn Office Script. I'm Overwhelmed. LOL

[ninobrn]

Leila, your proficiency astounds me! I don’t know how you manage to always be on top of these things! Simply incredible.

[retroclasica]

After beginning in the computer world with Open Access II and dBaseIII+, I learned VBA (mainly for MS Access) and its logic and structure helped me understand and use other languages, from php to Python, to mention two I use quite often. But VBA has enhanced and broadened my office’s solutions for almost the last 30 years and I hope it doesn’t disappear but in the end improves and shares more usability with the scripts. I love coding and learning something new every day.

[jamessawyer]

I really hope Office Scripts will reach a point of maturity to equal or even exceed VBA pretty fast. Not having to rely on your machine to run the code is brilliant

[ankitmanek]

Leila, if Oscars were given in the fields of Excel, you would have got hundreds of them for sure!

You are one of the best excel faculties on the Planet.

[MilhouseBS]

As an VBA user since 1994, this makes me want to learn OfficeScript.

[jumpofjoy]

I love how everything new and useful is being locked behind business or professional accounts.

[bencale]

This opens a whole new world of opportunities linking into Power Automate.

[lockhrt]

I haven't used office script but with my experience with Google App script (which is used in Google Spreadsheets and both are essentially same JavaScript at the core) I will mention some downsides of it:
1. It'll be 100 times slower than VBA if not thousands. As the code is executed on server side.
2. It's not practical to process rows one by one as VBA people do. Because it's even slower. You will have to put whole table in an array. Then process than array and write that array. However, on the plus side, array in JS are much easier to handle.
3. You can forget close integration with the OS as how VBA has it. (when it arrives on desktop)
4. You can forget creating complicated UI with office script. For that you'll have to learn HTML and CSS.
5. For the web version, your script can't run longer than a few minutes otherwise it'll be killed. I have a few VBA projects which handle a large amount of data and they run for a long time. This can't be done with web version of the office script.
6. These are much less ideal for custom functions (at least in the web version). User can have thousands of rows, and keeping custom function on every row will make your sheet slow as snail.

[teoxengineer]

I have started yet learning VBA thanks to Leila VBA courses and I am improving my VBA language every day to automate my excel solution in a short way. I think the step of learning VBA is so late and but so important milestone for me now because the revolution of VBA will turn into DAX language which has been used by PQ and PPivot and other applications.
if anybody is familiar with VBA code, learning Script and other DAX codes will be so easy but the main rules will take a bit long time and be doing more practice.
Thank you for giving us this new information about VBA's future and revolution Leila, 🧨

[MiguelCastro-zers]

The best of JS and Excel together. This is really amazing! especially the fact of using a high-demand language like JS, the syntax is easier to understand than VBA and requires fewer lines of code. I'm excited to see your upcoming videos about this. Thanks for sharing, Leila!

[SeamusHarper]

7:05 TypeScript is a superset of Javascript, not a subset ;-) Strictly speaking, it is a strict superset of ECMAScript 2015, which in turn is a superset of ECMAScript 5, which closest to what people call "Javascript".

There could be a discussion about if it even is a superset, because some JS code will not run in TS, but that is not because the syntax is invalid, but because TS enforces types.

I am really looking forward to Office Script being implemented on the Desktop <3 Thank you for the great synopsis, I think your estimate with 2031 is right ;-)

[tormodsolemslupphaug]

The integration with Power Automate, as well as more intuitive user interface for Office Scripts, is a game changer for me at least. It feels like the entry level for Office Scripts will probably be a lot lower, which is a very positive change 👍

[augustosisa]

VBA has more lives than a cat, I had listened to announces of its retirement for near a decade. And currently, it is still very strong.
Nevertheless, Typescript looks good and I agree with you that maybe it will replace of the future, but not in a short term.

[wulp]

I love VBA and I have been using it since the beginning, I started with WP 5.1 macros, Word Basic and Excel macros... At my age, the need to move to scripts is a no go...

[swittocx]

I'm happy to hear that Office Scripts is also based on JavaScript, just like Apps Script for Google Sheets. Makes it easier to program automations in both systems. Thanks Leila for sharing!

[lucicd]

Microsoft should work on VBA modernization. It is still very usable language, which could be improved. It would be great if you could make videos on Office JavaScript API and how to make add-ins.

[szisziszilvi]

A complete new world is opening with all the new office products, and I like it that the products will be connected. It seems to me that MS has a vision now. I am happy that I follow You, Leila, I've started with Excel, but I've discovered so much already with the help of your channel. Hey, don't make me an MS fan, please! I started decades ago a real sceptic, and that was a nice word to it. :)

[ExcelForFreelancers]

Great video Leila. I like the possibilities of scripts, however it still seems like Microsoft has a long way to go. Events would be a great addition when they get to it. Thanks so much for the creating this. Very well done :)

[pcrengnr]

Leila thx for taking the time in producing this video. Ofc scripts looks promising but lacks a lot of VBA functionality. Coders will have to totally recode as JS operates totally differently than VBA. The language structure is totally different. Some things are better some are worse but different. Sometimes new ain't better only different. VBA is Turing complete Ofc scripts are not at this time.
IF MS all of sudden dropped VBA how would industry react. It could cause a huge migration away from MS Ofc X never to return. I feel that VBA keeps MS Ofc ahead of the competition when that's gone goodby MS. Industry has a job to do, when that job can no longer be done by a product they are forced to move on.

I hope they, MS, keep VBA around as industry needs stable platforms for decades not just a few years. It's analogous to when IBM got behind the PC, the world jumped on because they knew it would last and they could invest as it had a future. Prior to the IBM PC it was computer of the week. Industry can't afford fad software it needs things that last and last that meets their needs.