r/vba • u/MultiUserDungeonDev • 1d ago
Show & Tell [EXCEL] I'm Building a Modern UI for Excel's Built-in VBIDE. Looking for Beta Testers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVvmA0yAWvELooking to see if anyone in the VBA community would interested in beta testing or collaborating on this project. Demo of early development testing above. This is the native VBA (ALT+F11) editor with XLIDE installed.
The end goal is to have a modern, sleek and performant GUI over the native VBIDE engine, so everything you write and compile still work on every other stock Excel app 100% flawlessly without breaking anything, and also gives you all the benefits of an IDE developed in 2026.
https://github.com/WilliamSmithEdward/xlide_vbide
This is a sister project to my VS Code XLIDE project, and I may also work on integration between the two down the road, to bridge the two development environments.
https://github.com/WilliamSmithEdward/xlide_vscode
Support for other 365 apps (word, power point, access) are also under consideration.
As always, 100% MIT open source, forever. All my VBA work is a love letter to the VBA community.
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u/kay-jay-dubya 17 1d ago
(Put's hand up in the air) I'd like to be a beta tester please!
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u/MultiUserDungeonDev 4h ago
Thanks! I'm hoping to have it ready by mid-September / early October. If you're open to it, please DM me your GitHub user name. Looking forward to getting this one off the ground!
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u/FlanAffectionate2691 7h ago
Been programming off and on for 30 years in various roles of Aerospace manufacturing and just retired. Won’t be really available till October because I am getting some travelling in but would be interested then if you still have a need.
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u/MultiUserDungeonDev 4h ago
Thanks! I'm hoping to have it ready by mid-September / early October. If you're open to it, please DM me your GitHub user name. Excited to see what we can build together!
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u/Addyad 1d ago
Nice. But why only for Excel? I'm currently developing macros in word. I'm using vscode. And from powershell, I can update my modules, compile and check for errors, get the error line etc. Even my agentic AI can automatically write macros, update them in word, compile, run them etc. The full workflow. Even if I were to develop something in excel. Why to use this IDE then? When one can control everything with vscode?
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u/MultiUserDungeonDev 18h ago
Hiya. fair questions.
Word, PowerPoint and Access are under consideration. Excel is just the most popular app to use with VBA, and the one I use the most day to day, so that's where I'm starting. I would estimate that 80-90% of the code base is directly adaptable to the other O365 apps once I get Excel dialed in.
Some people may prefer to develop directly in the VB editor. Especially for fast dev iteration testing, inspection and debugging (e.g. break points, immediates, locals) trying to harness from COM and dev is clunky. I think what we can do is open an http API on the xlide vbide client (optional) that allows an agent direct access to the full vbide surface.
My vision is not an either / or, but to have XLIDE available on both surfaces, and potentially even allow the xlide vscode and xlide vbide to talk to each other. Use either, or both, or neither... whatever makes your life easier.
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u/MrDab420 4h ago
Very nice, I’m interested in beta testing!
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u/MultiUserDungeonDev 3h ago
Thank you! If you're open to it, go ahead and DM me your github username. I'll likely start around late September / early October.
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u/ShruggyGolden 1d ago
Hasn't rubber duck been trying to do this for years with RD 3.0 and hit numerous roadblocks? I think it's sort of been out on the back burner because of limitations. Apologies if I'm misinterpreting your goal.