Give the VBA IDE a major overhaul finally

It's been over 20 years since the VBA IDE was created in its present form. MS has since created a number of modern and efficient development environments. Even if the VBA environment has long been referred to as outdated: it is simply the everyday reality for the majority of professional Office developers (especially all serious Access developers). I can not imagine that it lacks capacity to MS to bring the VBA IDE into a more contemporary form.

To insist that it would not be worthwhile to invest in an improved IDE, is roughly as if an automaker refuses any further developments in the wheels for 20 years, with the note that they would someday replace all wheels by air cushions.

I am thinking about things like "real" IntelliSense (comparable to that in current Visual Studio languages), extensive auto code completion, syntax checks that support the coder and do not hinder him/her, a much better integrated help system, refactoring tools, etc..
In other words: Not a newly decorated IDE, but simply an up-to-date developement tool like those in modern IDEs (Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA etc.). I do believe that this would not be "old wine in new bottles" but a valuable "productivity tool" for all Office developers.

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Heinz Högel shared this idea · Jul 28, 2016 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

Out of scope ·

AdminOffice Developer Team (Microsoft Office Extensibility, Microsoft) responded · Dec 3, 2019

Sorry for the earlier post – yes, we are excited about the early preview of Office Scripts, but we do realize there are many investments in VBA, and VBA has much broader scope and set of capabilities across applications. We want to thank everyone for their comments and votes on this thread. This is not the first time we’ve received this sort of request. We’ve also heard this feedback on the Excel UserVoice forum. You can read our full response at https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/8843113-bring-vba-into-the-modern-world.

We’ll summarize the key points here.

VBA will still continue to be supported in Office, and as we add new features in the Windows desktop versions of Office, we will add object model APIs for those features. You can find more details about feature improvements here: https://aka.ms/odevblog-vba.
However, the VB runtime was built a long time ago, before today’s cross-platform world. Moving forward we need to provide the ability for folks to take advantage of opportunities with cloud-centered, cross-platform, and cross-device development. Our strategy moving forward is to use cross-platform JavaScript APIs that are available to developers in Office 2016 and beyond. We are continuously working to extend the object model to achieve parity with the VBA/COM object model. We’ll communicate changes and updates on the developer blog at https://aka.ms/officedevblog.
Again, we appreciate the developer passion around VBA, and we’ll continue supporting VBA.

Thank you,
Office Extensibility Team

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