Has anyone used Script Lab?

Morning all,

I was watching a presentation from the Microsoft Ignite conference and noticed that the presenter had an add in called 'Script Lab' installed. Reading up on it it appears to be a potential alternative to VBA. Does anyone have any experience of using this and any thoughts on it being the ultimate successor to VBA?

Regards,

Snook

It's not really an alternative to VBA. It's more of a playground for using JavaScript in Excel.

You've been able to create JavaScript addins (I think they're called apps for office) in excel for ages (maybe 2013?), but they never really seem to have taken off outside certain use cases.

I think that this is probably due to the barrier of entry and accessibility, JavaScript is much harder than VBA to grok and you need to use HTML to build interfaces rather than dragging and dropping on forms. You also have to distribute the "apps" you create through the office store - you can't just save them in workbooks and send them - unlike VBA.

Ah ok, cheers Kyle123. I remember someone from the Excel development team was asked a couple of years ago about whether you should learn VBA and their advice was to learn a cross platform language like Javascript. Hence when I saw the script lab add in I wasn't sure whether that was Microsoft's initial foray into replacing VBA.