VbaDiff 4.2

VbaDiff quickly compares and diffs the VBA in two Office documents. It highlights changed or missing modules with clear icons and allows you to drill down to see the actual changes in code.

VbaDiff reads directly from the Excel file and doesn't need to start Excel. It also has the ability to export your source code to disk.

VbaDiff compares the embedded VBA projects in two Microsoft Office documents. VbaDiff provides a overview of the differences between two VBA projects, then helps you to drill down to find the exact changes.

This makes VbaDiff extremely useful for comparing different versions of an Excel spreadsheet, or finding common code between two workbooks.

After you've loaded VbaDiff, you simply drag one document into the left-hand textbox, then another document into the right-hand textbox. VbaDiff reads and compares the embedded Vba Projects in each of the files and presents the differences to you.

Most attempts to create Diff tools for VBA try to export the code from the Office document using the Visual Basic Editor. Once the code is on disk, the user is expected to manually diff each of the code files.

VbaDiff works differently - it reads the VBA source code directly from the document file on disk. Let' use Excel as an example to see the advantages of this approach:

- VbaDiff can often run on corrupt workbooks and recover lost Vba code.

- VbaDiff does not have to open an Excel session and load the document. Office Documents often have code in them that runs when the document is loaded, or Excel formulas that update. You may not wish to run that code or update those formulas (especially in production environments). As VbaDiff does not load the document into Microsoft Office, no code is run and no formulas are updated.

- VBA Projects are often locked, perhaps with a password. This causes a big problem for tools that try to export from the Visual Basic Editor. VbaDiff can read locked projects, even when they have passwords.

- Using VbaDiff precludes the need to allow trusted access to the Visual Basic Editor. Other solutions require this to be turned on and this is often considered a security risk.

- It's quicker! For example, if you have a 40Mb Excel file, loading it into Excel could take quite some time. VbaDiff just scans the code it needs.

VbaDiff's direct approach leads to a more stable, quick and secure method of reading the code from a VBA Project.

VbaDiff complements existing Source Control Management tools like Perforce or Subversion. By using VbaDiff as your external diff tool for Excel workbooks, you can actually see the VBA differences between revisions.

VbaDiff gives you the option of exporting code directly from the GUI. This can be useful for capturing code for later examination. For example, if you see some code in a module that needs further investigation, you can export the code to disk and then e-mail that code to other programmers. This would be quicker and cleaner than either:

- trying to send the whole document (the document could be very large).

- opening the document and copying the code. If the document is large it will take a long time to load and it may run code when it loads up.

To export a code module, right-click on the module in the GUI. A context menu will appear and you can select 'Export' from this menu.

When you click on Export a dialog appears asking you where to save the file. Once you have selected a location, VbaDiff saves the code from the selected module in a text-readable format.

Before downloading, click here to update your computer drivers