Version control for VBA code in Excel

Question

Hello,

I was wondering if there is any possibility to add version control to the VBA code used in Excel...

I've been searching the internet and this forum but cannot seem to find any answer.

We are using TFS 2010.

Thanks !

 

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Answer 1

Have you looked at the discussion here => http://stackoverflow.com/questions/131605/best-way-to-do-version-control-for-ms-excel

Personally you won't be able to perform version history comparisons, you can still version control the excel, vba but without being able to perform merging between various versions of development i don't know how much help it would prove to you.

 

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Answer 2

Hello Frederik,

Thanks for your post.

I am sorry that I can’t find any official document stating that you can use TFS2010 Version Control feature in the Excel 2010 (maybe even though you have installed MSSCCI). And I think if you can find the Excel compare and merge tools, you can integrate them with TFS2010 easily. You can change the diff and merge tool for the specific file extension. For detail, please refer to: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmanning/archive/2006/02/20/diff-merge-configuration-in-team-foundation-common-command-and-argument-values.aspx

Thanks.

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Vicky Song [MSFT]
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Answer 3

Has anyone followed the Stackoverflow, or similar, advice and gotten it to work in TFS?

I have look at some links:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/131605/best-way-to-do-version-control-for-ms-excel

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/18029/SourceTools-xla

http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=4061&dsMessageId=905178

But don't see how I could get that to work in TFS, maybe need to add TortoiseMerge to TFS?

We have a DB system where reports are defined in an Excel document. You check it out exclusively in TFS, change it and then run an Excel macro which creates five source files. After the program is built and tested with the new changes, the Excel file is checked in together with the five created source files.

This worked well when there was only one developer creating/changing reports. Now several may want to change the Excel file simultaneously, but everyone but one has to wait. The Excel file must be checked in as quickly as possible, together with the created files, but the changes have to be tested first.

This of course means a working solution for merge is needed. The VBA macro code needs to be version controlled, as well as the Excel document itself. It seems like this can be done with open software, but there are many settings in VS and TFS and I don't get a grip of it all. We can use the XML file format, but that doesn't seem to make any difference since it's packed & compressed. However, the described solution linked to where two Excel windows are opened and changes highlighted in red is good enough, no automatic merge is needed.