Greetings All,

I’ve been**** out on these forums for a little over a year now and it’s been really fun to see the number of interactions grow along the way. So many of you have stepped up to help fellow coders and ISVs on both technical and business-related questions and it’s great to see happen.

That said, I need to share some changes with all of you… including a little background on why they came about. While VBA is not going away in the foreseeable future, the VBA team is now focused on new technologies: VSTO and VSTA. [NOTE: Microsoft has partnered with Summit Software to provide businesses with VBA support going forward.]

Up to this point, we were able to tap into an underutilized support team. They had extra bandwidth and we took full advantage of it by sending them unanswered questions from the forum. Now that they are at full capacity providing direct support to ISVs enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Program, we will no longer be able to take advantage of this team.

So, as of July 1, I will no longer be able to escalate the VBA forum questions to the ISV buddy support team. However, the forum itself isn’t going away (unless you want it to). I've consulted via email with a few of the members who are very active on this forum and they had a few differing opinions: on one hand, even without the support backing, visitors will still be able to get some of their questions answered by other members; on the other hand, this forum has always been largely undersupported and members would be better supported in the Office Developer forums. It's a tough call and I’d really like to get your input on whether or not we should leave this forum open or redirect you to other VBA resources.

There are a number of very knowledgeable people that hang out on this forum (you know who they are J) and I’m working on a list of alternative community and resources that I’ll post on the site for your continued reference. Stay tuned.

Even though my team works directly with ISVs who develop software solutions on the Microsoft platform, we appreciate you all, no matter if you’re a student just learning VBA, a professional trying to build macros for your office, or an ISV developer or business decision maker!

I’ve posted this before and want to highlight again, how much I appreciate everyone’s participation and helpfulness and I hope that you’ll continue to hang out here and share your insights, expertise, and camaraderie. I’ll stop by and participate as often as I can.

Thank you!
Brenda (ISV Buddy Team)