I'm going to be brushing up on my VB this weekend, but I have a dilemma. The version I want to have a solid understanding of is 6.0. I have a copy of 4.0 from way back in the day when I first learned the language, and I also downloaded the 2005 EE free version. Which version is most like 6.0? I'm going to want to integrate VB with Excel spreadsheets. Also, does anyone have any good links for this type of thing? Specifically that deal with Excel & VB, but really any good VB sites?

A good question here is what you really want information on:

Using a stand alone exe (made in Visual Basic 6) to load/save/interact with Excel, or add Visual Basic [for applications] code (known as VBA) to an Excel spreadsheet or template file. Coding wise they are very similar to each other, except that one has the relationship to Excel embedded.

If it's VBA, then you just need a copy of Excel. More specifically, during the Office install process, select custom and browse down the tree until you find the VBA entry, which includes an option for including the VBA help file.

If it's stand alone Visual Basic 6, you'll need a copy of 6 (VB.NET is totally different), and you'll want to look up Excel Automation on the MSDN reference library (or post some specific questions, as I've used the Excel Automation interface from Delphi and VBA code [Access] so I could help you out).

Getting Visual Basic 6 will be a challenge (it is almost 10 years old now). You will either need to buy a used copy (which leaves you open to getting ripped off with a non-working burned CD from a guy in the former Soviet bloc - the one reviewer on Amazon claims he was sent VB4 instead of the advertised version 6) or download it legitimately from Microsoft via an MSDN subscription. MSDN Premium gives you Visual Basic 6 Enterprise Edition (2 CD ISOs and a licence key, 1.04GB), but I don't know if MSDN Professional (or other lesser editions) do. Looking at the comparison page it isn't listed at all (though there are a lot of things on MSDN that aren't...like the fact that QuickBasic Pro is actually available for download), making me think it probably is in Professional given that it doesn't seem important enough to list in the comparison.

Is this for a specific job?

Edit: Oh, and there is one luck based method for getting a copy of VB6 to learn from: Visual Basic 6 Learning Edition, which was included with a bunch of Visual Basic 6 books back in the day on the included CD. If you know of any discount computer book places (the places that have stacks of horribly outdated computer books being sold off for 10% of their original sticker price) you could dig around for one (just make sure the CD is still attached). Keep in mind you can't distribute stuff made with Learning Edition, so if you need a VB6 compiler for actual work, you'll be back where you started.

The reason for my wanting to learn 6.0 specifically is because its for work, i'm going to be helping out with a project that has aspects of it coded in VB 6. Updating everything to the newest version is out of the question at the moment.

I already have a pretty good working knowledge of VB syntax, so I guess I'll just brush up with 2005 and assume that since VB is pretty easy, I'll be able to decipher the differences in the 6.0 code when I see it.

Thanks for the replies!

Quote:Original post by Funkymunky
The reason for my wanting to learn 6.0 specifically is because its for work, i'm going to be helping out with a project that has aspects of it coded in VB 6. Updating everything to the newest version is out of the question at the moment.

I already have a pretty good working knowledge of VB syntax, so I guess I'll just brush up with 2005 and assume that since VB is pretty easy, I'll be able to decipher the differences in the 6.0 code when I see it.

Thanks for the replies!

To be honest I would advice against this approach (unless you want to learn and use VB.NET seperate from this VB6 project). Simply put, the real things beside the basic BASIC syntax of VB6 that you need to learn to work well in the language are all the gotcha aspects of the language: like how calling a function varies depending on if you are recording the result (one requires you to enclose the parameters in brackets, the other expects you to not enclose them), or how the regular INTEGER type is 16bit signed, not 32bit signed, or how the "standard" library varies wildly between arrays/collections being zero based or starting at 1, or that sub/function parameters are references by default. And this is before you start finding out fun stuff related to Visual Basic variants (and the fact that even if you declare variables types the data still often get mangled by the VB variant code) or all the "runtime" errors that coming from any other language on the planet you'd think would have been caught by the compiler (just be grateful that it will usually catch an unterminated IF statement, rather then crash at runtime when it hits that code).

The VB.NET syntax really only has a passing resemblance to VB6: almost all the oddities have been removed, the .NET standard library replaces most of the VB library and controls, and the compiler is no longer retarded. So really, as a not beginner programmer who is just switching to another language (VB6), the real things you need to know to work well in VB6 have been totally removed in VB.NET.

If worse comes to worse, just open Office (I'd recommend Access but if not Excel is second best) and play around with VBA, which is far, far closer to VB6 then .NET (in particular it has almost all the same gotchas). With Access you could actually create a form, drop on some buttons, and have something pretty close to using VB6 without actually doing anything with the Access database functionality.