VBA: Proactively upgrade Excel Add-ins and Macros to avoid unnecessary errors while working with new Office version

Upgrade Excel Add-ins and Macros

With every new version of Microsoft Office, user machines are upgraded with latest Office version for mostly following reasons:

·         To utilize benefits of new functional and technical features

·         The upgrade might be followed as part of company policy

·         To avoid any sort of compliance issues

·         To overcome the limitation or constraints present in earlier version

·         To meet demands of internal and external clients

Reason may be multiple, however Microsoft Office based applications are affected once Office version changes on user machine. VBA applications need to be upgraded to avoid future warnings and/or errors within the application. When we talk about VBA based application, multiple things pop up in our mind.

·         VBA dynamic link libraries  backward compatibility

·         VBA template changes like design, formatting etc.

·         VBA add-in changes

·         Application SMS package change

·         Digital signing of VBA templates and add-ins

If VBA based applications like Excel add-ins, macros and templates are not aligned with the latest Office version, following situation might occur.

·         User’s queries and escalations resulting due to new warnings or errors in VBA application. Most of the time there is no error but business users consider new alert or warning, as change in application behavior. If it is proactively communicated by product management group, it might reduce user frustration.

·         If VBA application is continued on old Office version, it might introduce additional management approvals to support the application on old Office version and thereby more delay for application SMS packaging group to work on software packaging and SMS testing. This delay is introduced due to absence of old Office version on their machines needed for VBA templates and add-in digital signing and unit testing with old Office version.

·         VBA application on old version might work due to backward compatibility supported by new Office version but the application might perform slow or hang at some point of time. It might face unexpected errors as well. Design and formatting of document might appear disturbed and different in some cases.

There can be more technical and functional issues with VBA applications working with older Office version. Hence it is recommended to upgrade VBA applications depending on change in Microsoft Office version.