vba-edit 0.2.0

Enable seamless MS Office VBA code editing in preferred editor or IDE (facilitating the use of coding assistants and version control workflows)

Enable seamless MS Office VBA code editing in preferred editor or IDE (facilitating the use of coding assistants and version control workflows)

Note

This project is heavily inspired by code from xlwings vba edit, actively maintained and developed by the xlwings-Project under the BSD 3-Clause License. We use the name xlwings solely to give credit to the orginal author and to refer to existing video tutorials on the subject of vba editing. This does not imply endorsement or sponsorship by the original authors or contributors. [!IMPORTANT] It’s early days. Use with care and backup your imortant macro-enabled MS Office documents before using them with this tool!

First tests have been very promissing. Feedback appreciated via github issues.

Links

• Homepage

• Documentation

• Source

• Changelog

Quickstart

Installation

To install vba-edit, you can use pip:

pip install vba-edit

or uv pip:

uv pip install vba-edit

Overview command-line tools

vba-edit v0.2.0 (word-vba|excel-vba|...)

A command-line tool suite for managing VBA content in MS Office documents.

WORD|EXCEL|...-VBA allows you to edit, import, and export VBA content
from Office documents. If no file is specified, the tool will attempt
to use the currently active document.

         usage: word-vba [-h] {edit,import,export} ...
         usage: excel-vba [-h] {edit,import,export} ...
         usage: access-vba [-h] {edit,import,export} ...      {planned in v0.3.0}
         usage: powerpoint-vba [-h] {edit,import,export} ...  {planned in v0.4.0}

Commands:
    edit    Edit VBA content in Office document
    import  Import VBA content into Office document
    export  Export VBA content from Office document

Examples :
    word-vba  edit   <--- uses active Word document and current directory for exported
                          VBA files (*.bas/*.cls/*.frm) & syncs changes back to the
                          active Word document


    Options:

    word-vba  import -f "C:/path/to/document.docx" --vba-directory "path/to/vba/files"
    word-vba  export --file "C:/path/to/document.docx" --encoding cp850 --save-metadata
    word-vba  edit --vba-directory "path/to/vba/files" --logfile "path/to/logfile" --verbose

positional arguments:
  {edit,import,export}
    edit                Edit VBA content in Office document
    import              Import VBA content into Office document
    export              Export VBA content from Office document

options:
  -h, --help            Show this help message and exit

Important

Requires “Trust access to the VBA project object model” enabled.

Usage

• Working with MS Word VBA code

• Working with MS Excel VBA code

• … (work in progress)

Working with MS Word VBA code

WORD-VBA EDIT COMMAND

word-vba edit

Updates the VBA modules of the active (or specified) MS Word document from their local exports every time you hit save. If you run this for the first time, the modules will be exported from MS Word into your current working directory.

usage: word-vba edit [-h] [--encoding ENCODING | --detect-encoding]
                     [--file FILE] [--vba-directory VBA_DIRECTORY]
                     [--verbose]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --encoding ENCODING, -e ENCODING
                        Encoding to be used when reading VBA files from Word document
                        (default: cp1252)
  --detect-encoding, -d
                        Auto-detect input encoding for VBA files exported from Word
                        document
  --file FILE, -f FILE  Path to Word document (optional, defaults to active document)
  --vba-directory VBA_DIRECTORY
                        Directory to export VBA files to (optional, defaults to
                        current directory)
  --verbose, -v         Enable verbose logging output
  --logfile [LOGFILE], -l [LOGFILE]
                        Enable logging to file. Optional path can be specified
                        (default: vba_edit.log)

WORD-VBA EXPORT COMMAND

word-vba export

Overwrites the local version of the modules with those from the active (or specified) Word document.

usage: word-vba export [-h] [--save-metadata] [--encoding ENCODING | --detect-encoding]
                       [--file FILE] [--vba-directory VBA_DIRECTORY] [--verbose]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --save-metadata, -m   Save metadata file with character encoding information
                        (default: False)
  --encoding ENCODING, -e ENCODING
                        Encoding to be used when reading VBA files from Word
                        document (default: cp1252)
  --detect-encoding, -d
                        Auto-detect input encoding for VBA files exported from
                        Word document
  --file FILE, -f FILE  Path to Word document (optional, defaults to active document)
  --vba-directory VBA_DIRECTORY
                        Directory to export VBA files to (optional, defaults to
                        current directory)
  --verbose, -v         Enable verbose logging output
  --logfile [LOGFILE], -l [LOGFILE]
                        Enable logging to file. Optional path can be specified
                        (default: vba_edit.log)

WORD-VBA IMPORT COMMAND

word-vba import

Overwrites the VBA modules in the active (or specified) Word document with their local versions.

usage: word-vba import [-h] [--encoding ENCODING] [--file FILE]
                       [--vba-directory VBA_DIRECTORY] [--verbose]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --encoding ENCODING, -e ENCODING
                        Encoding to be used when writing VBA files back into Word
                        document (default: cp1252)
  --file FILE, -f FILE  Path to Word document (optional, defaults to active document)
  --vba-directory VBA_DIRECTORY
                        Directory to export VBA files to (optional, defaults to
                        current directory)
  --verbose, -v         Enable verbose logging output
  --logfile [LOGFILE], -l [LOGFILE]
                        Enable logging to file. Optional path can be specified
                        (default: vba_edit.log)

Note

Whenever you change something in the Word VBA editor (such as the layout of a form or the properties of a module), you have to run word-vba export.

Working with MS Excel VBA code

excel-vba edit

Updates the VBA modules of the active (or specified) MS Excel document from their local exports every time you hit save. If you run this for the first time, the modules will be exported from MS Excel into your current working directory.

Note

The --file/-f flag allows you to specify a file path instead of using the active document.

excel-vba export

Overwrites the local version of the modules with those from the active (or specified) Excel document.

excel-vba import

Overwrites the VBA modules in the active (or specified) Excel document with their local versions.

Note

Whenever you change something in the VBA editor (such as the layout of a form or the properties of a module), you have to run excel-vba export.

Video Tutorial

Tip

Watch the excellent xlwings vba edit walkthrough on Youtube. The excel-vba edit|import|export should do more or less what xlwings vba edit|import|edit does (with the exception that currently VBA files are not (yet) deleted from the Excel file if they are deleted in edit mode). If you prefer to use xlwings & it is installed, it is possible to use a wrapper for xlwings by typing excel-vba edit|import|export -x. In this case, there is an additional command-line option --vba-directory. If you often work with Excel-VBA-Code, make sure that xlwings is installed:

pip install xlwings

or uv pip:

uv pip install xlwings