org (www.openoffice.org), which runs on the Windows and Linux platforms.
Throughout this book, we??™ve explored various ways we can code in VBA in Excel 2007, and
we??™ve seen some pretty neat solutions. However, we are not limited to using code created from
within the Excel VBE. We can create ActiveX components using Visual Basic (5 or 6) that we
can access from our Excel projects. We can also create assemblies using the .NET Framework
and Visual Studio Tools for Office, provided by Microsoft.
In Chapter 9, we will take a look at both of these tools and see how we can add functionality
to our Excel 2007 projects using them.
CHAPTER 8 n OFFICE INTEGRATION 314
ActiveX and .NET
ActiveX? .NET? In a book about programming in Excel 2007? Of course! Yes, ActiveX controls
and components are still kicking around. And .NET technologies are the wave of the future for
those Microsoft-centric developers among us (which is why you??™re reading this book, I??™d
assume).
ActiveX, for the uninitiated, is Microsoft??™s technology for component software. ActiveX
comes in two flavors: components and controls. The controls we added to our Excel UserForm
in Chapter 4 were ActiveX controls. If you have any experience with VB 6 or earlier, you??™ve used
ActiveX controls on your forms, and perhaps you??™ve downloaded free controls written by other
developers or purchased control libraries written by third parties. The same is true of Microsoft
Access controls. ActiveX components, on the other hand, do not necessarily provide a UI,
but they do expose a set of functionality you can use in your programs.
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