Update VB6 dll to .NET

[rdeleon]

I am not sure if this is the correct forum to post, but..

I have a dll that was written in vb6. An Excel spreadsheet references the dll.

I want to get away from vb6, but I am not sure how to go about it.

How does Excel "play" with .NET?

Is the Excel/dll architecture still supported using .NET objects?

Any guidance is appreciated.

Take care and God bless.

Rene

 

[RiverGuy]

I haven't done this myself, but here is a link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jigarme/archive/2008/04/28/how-to-register-net-assembly-for-com-interop.aspx

I'm not sure my first choice in .Net development would be to modify an existing vb6 project just to do it. If it works, it works. I'd recommend converting something which needs to be modified/upgraded or starting with new development.

 

[rdeleon]

Hey Riverguy, thanks for the response.

I really am not into doing something "just to do it", so maybe I am not looking at this from the correct point of view.

The biggest problem I have is not knowing how Microsoft is going to support Excel working with COM/dll in the future. I guess I could resign myself to the fact that I could continue to code in XP/VB6 for the foreseeable future, but will future versions of Office continue to support the current architecture? The biggest issue I have is that the application uses the Office Web Components, which are not available with Office 2007 and beyond. I have read about the Visual Studio Tools for Office that comes with VS2008/2010, which is why I was thinking I need to upgrade the dll. But this brings me back to my original question; am I creating a .NET dll (if there is such a thing) or how do I get my current functionality and the new functionality consolidated into something that works with Office 2003 and beyond.

The software cost is not negligible to us, so I want to make sure that I am going down the correct path.

Any guidance/opinion is appreciated.

 

[PRPhx]

VB.Net and Excel work well togather. Do a google search to find complete examples. It's not really difficult to do. You will need to make a reference to the COM object for the version(s) of Excel you are using on each user's pc.

As an example take a look here:

http://forums.devx.com/showthread.php?threadid=158515