Title OpenOffice.

org Calc adds support for Excel VBA

Date 2006.11.17 16:01
Author StoneLion
Topic http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/1726205

As an Excel user, you may have looked at OpenOffice.org and found that
it doesn't support Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the Microsoft
Office macro language. If you've spent years building hundreds of Excel
macros, the fear of losing them all could keep you locked in to Office.
If so, it's time to look again; Novell has taken OpenOffice.org's source
code and create a version of its own that supports Excel VBA.
Novell's Noel Power is the developer in charge of introducing Excel VBA
interoperability into OpenOffice.org Calc. He says that the
interoperability is achieved by:
• allowing Excel VBA macros to run natively within OpenOffice.org;
• providing a compatibility object model;
• continuously improving the compatibility model by identifying and
implementing the most useful and widely used APIs;
• extending the symbols available to ooo-basic to include the
compatibility API; and
• modifying the core ooo-basic runtime to handle Excel VBA
syntax.
Noel says, "Novell is pushing this to the wider community. The source
code is freely available from the OpenOffice.org Hackers Pages, and
instructions on how to build it are on the OpenOffice.org build page.
Additionally, we are pleased to say that we are also shipping the VBA
interoperability feature with Novell's branded OpenOffice.org versions
for Windows.
If you want to build the new edition of OOo from scratch, the steps are
fairly simple:
 1. Download the source code.
2. Carry out the configuration for your system. This is the most
labor-intensive part of the process, but the feedback you get is
useful, and so it's just a matter of deciding which additional files
your system requires, or which parts of the installation that you
want to disable.
3. Download the actual OOo packages. (Don't worry -- once the
configuration is completed you just need to type ./download).
4. Make the application.
However, you might not have to do all of the work yourself. "As far I can
tell," said Noel, "the VBA interoperability feature currently ships with
following distro versions of OpenOffice.org":
• Ark
• Debian
• DroplineGNOME
• Frugalware
• Gentoo
• Mandriva
• QiLinux
• Red Hat (FC6)
• Ubuntu
• SUSE and SUSE SLED
Unfortunately, there's no easy way of identifying whether your distro
supports the VBA interoperability apart from trying some VBA code.
According to Noel, "You can use the ooo-basic organizer (Tools ->
Macros -> Organize Macros -> OpenOffice.org Basic) and navigate
to the document. If the document contains macros and they are not
commented out, chances are the feature is enabled."
If you've installed a supported distribution, or built Novell's version of
OpenOffice.org on your Linux box, or installed Novell's OpenOffice.org
for Windows, will any Excel macro work in Calc? "No," Noel said, "support
for VBA is not complete, but we think we cover a large portion of the
common usage patterns. Those macros that we've come across mostly use
a manageable subset of objects in the Excel API (such as the Range,
Worksheet, Workbook, etc.). We have concentrated on supporting those
objects, and the most commonly used method/properties of those
objects."
If you've got your own Excel spreadsheet to try, then open it up and see
what happens. The macros should run just as if you'd opened the
document in Excel. If you haven't got Excel, Noel passed a good example
on to me -- hypocycloid-demo.xls. A hypocycloid (in case you're
interested) traces the path of a fixed point on a circle as it rolls around
inside a larger circle (anyone remember Spirograph?). The spreadsheet
will generate different hypocycloids for you. If you are using
OpenOffice.org with VBA support, all of the buttons and sliders should
work, changing the image displayed on the screen, despite the fact
that all of the code is written using Excel VBA.
How would things differ if you'd loaded hypocycloid-demo.xls into a
version of OpenOffice.org without VBA support? OpenOffice.org will
open an Excel spreadsheet even if the spreadsheet contains VBA macros,
but when you press the buttons nothing will happen -- and most
importantly, you won't get any error messages.
Let's look at the code in the OOo Basic Editor. Go to the OpenOffice.org
menu and click on Tools -> Macros -> Organize Macros -> OpenOffice.org
Basic.
Sub VBA_Library
Rem Sub openWorkbooks (iFiles())
Rem Dim wBook as Workbook
Rem Dim wList as String
Rem Dim iFile as String
Rem
Rem For Each iFile in iFiles
Rem Workbooks.Open iFile
Rem Next iFile
Rem
Rem For Each wBook In Workbooks
Rem wList = wList & wBook.Name & chr(13)
Rem Next wBook
Rem Worksheets("Sheet2").Range("A1") = Now()
Rem msgbox Workbooks.Count & " files open:" & chr(13) & chr(13) & wList
Rem End Sub
End Sub
You'll see that standard OpenOffice.org handles VBA code in a module.
The VBA code all gets turned into comments, and then is encapsulated
into a new subroutine (which is given the same name as the module).
However, if you're using OpenOffice.org with VBA support, you'll see a
different picture:
Option VBASupport 1
Sub openWorkbooks (iFiles())
Dim wBook as Workbook
Dim wList as String
Dim iFile as String

For Each iFile in iFiles

Workbooks.Open iFile
Next iFile

For Each wBook in Workbooks

wList = wList & wBook.Name & chr( 13 )
Next wBook
Worksheets( "Sheet2" ).Range("A1") = Now()
msgbox Workbooks.Count & " files open:" & chr(13) & chr(13) & wList
End Sub
This version of OpenOffice.org Calc adds an extra line of code to any
module that it loads and which contains VBA code:
Option VBASupport
1
This line has no effect on standard OOo Basic code, but it ensures that
the VBA interoperability is recognized correctly. If you prefer the VBA
statements (or if they're just what you're more used to) then you must
remember to add this line manually when you create your own VBA
modules for Calc.
While all this works well, it is not yet a mainstream OOo solution. Noel
says, "Sun does have a proprietary solution, but it has some drawbacks.
This year at OOoCon I had some frank discussions with some of the Sun
developers and there at least seems to be some willingness to align their
solution and ours. The impression that I got was they felt that our
approach was a better one (they do a translation phase, whereas we run
the VBA natively). I also got the impression that they deemphasizing
support for their solution. We hope to increase the pace of our
upstreaming efforts and aim to have the initial effort completed in the
next couple of months.
"At the moment the situation is still that the interoperability feature is
only available from the popular distros that use ooo-build. However, quite
a few steps have been made in getting closer to the goal of integrating all
of this work into the main OpenOffice.org source. A fair proportion of
the core basic runtime modifications have already been folded into the
'vanilla' OpenOffice.org; the compatibility API and some of the other
hooks are not. I am, however, in close contact with the developers at Sun
and we are working together to try and get all of the feature in. As this
is a complicated feature, and touches many parts of the code, this is not
a trivial task, it will take time".
Your can learn more about using Excel VBA with OpenOffice.org Calc in
my book Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming:
OOoBasic and Calc automation.
Links:
1. "OpenOffice.org Hackers Pages" - http://go-oo.org/
2. "OpenOffice.org build page" -
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Building#ooo-build_builds
3. "Novell's branded OpenOffice.org versions for Windows" -
http://www.novell.com/products/openworkgroupsuite/product_eval
s.html
4. "source code" -
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Building_with_ooobuild#c
onfigure
5. "configuration" -
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Building_with_ooobuild#c
onfigure
6. "Download" -
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Building_with_ooobuild#d
ownload
7. "hypocycloid-demo.xls" -
http://www.linuxtalk.co.uk/ooo_vba/hypocycloid-demo.xls
8. "Spirograph" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph
9. "drawbacks" -
http://www.sun.com/software/star/starsuite/faqs/technical.jsp#
q_16
10."Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming:
OOoBasic and Calc automation." -
http://www.packtpub.com/OOoCalcMacros/book

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printed from Linux.com, OpenOffice.org Calc adds support for Excel VBA
on 2006-11-19 17:15:53