From Standard VB 6 Do I Upgrade to Premium VB 6 or VB.NET?

[The Rookie]

PROJECT: I am building a model configurator/quotation builer program for our sales company. A collection of UserForms are used to manipulate an Excel spreadsheet which is then printed as a pdf quotation.

CURRENT ISSUE: I have been reading through your thread histories on creating executables, but I’ve realized I don’t have the premium VB y’all seem to have. So my question is – what version do I need to purchase, and should it be VB 6 or VB.NET? Will the next Microsoft release of Office include the “basic” VB6 version or the “basic” VB.NET version? I suppose I might get a different answer if I posted this under the VB.NET forum, but I figured I could trust you guys not to lead me astray...

Also, what beginner's resources do you recommend that OVERVIEWS the major concepts in VB. I do OK at figuring very specific things out, but I usually have the feeling I'm taking the wrong big picture approach.

VISUAL BASIC VERSION: VB 6.3 (Retail 6.4.9972). This is the VB that came with Office 2003/Windows XP/Dell PC.

[techgnome]

What is it that "Premium" (Although I've never heard of it) do that Standard doesn't?

Also, unless you are at a point where the app can be re-written, stick with VB6 for now. Moving to .NET changes a number of things.

By "Basic" VB6, do you mean VBA? If so, then yes and no.... There's another thread around here somewhere that tackles this in more depth.

Tg

[The Rookie]

Under the file menu, I don't have the option of "make executable" or "Make <your program here>.exe" as has been suggested in other threads.

I have only the Visual Basic that you automatically get with Microsoft Office - would that be "VBA"? I've heard of VB Standard, Enterpise and two other levels I can't remember and want to know which of these I need to create an executable.

Thanks

[techgnome]

Ok.... it does sound like what you have is VBA.... NOT VB.... VBA was mostly for writing macros and doing other Office related minor programming. If you are developing a full application, then VB is the way to go.

VB Standard is the minimum or lowest version available that will allow you to create executables. How ever, MS earlier this year dropped support for it, and it is becoming increasingly harder to find vendors that still have it in stock for sale.

Since you may want to re-write the app anyways (moving from VBA to VB is 90% as simple as copy paste, but it's never "just that simple"... know what I mean?) you may want to consider VB.NET Standard. Might want to check out the Express versions of Visual Studio.... I think you can get VB.NET Developer Express (or something like that) for less than $100.

Tg

[The Rookie]

techgnome - thanks for the help; I guess I've been "moved" to where I belong, to the General Developer's Area. I'm sure you're right that I have VBA. Have a good one.