VB, VBA, VBE and COM References
This page features a list of useful references regarding the VBA programming language and how it gets interpreted by the VBE. Moreover, this is the home of several references regarding COM. For books on these topics, see Books on VBA and the VBE.
The VBA language Specification (PDF) from Microsoft.
The Office VBA File Format Structure (PDF) from Microsoft.
Structured Storage and part 2 and Stream Decompression.
A nice overview in PCodeDmp's ReadMe.md file that describes the p-code storage and decoding of a module.
A Tech Ed 2000 presentation giving an overview of the VBA SDK and APC.
Help (.chm) files for Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Word are available from the OfficeDev GitHub account
The official GitHub repo for all Office VBA documentation
docs.microsoft.com has a handy guide that covers several stuff about COM and extra you wish you didn't know. In case the URL doesn't work, here's the (Wayback machine URL)
Long since taken down by Microsoft, a cached copy of The Component Object Model Specification can be found here (Wayback machine URL)
An archived MSDN article from December 2000 on using TlbInf32.dll to inspect a Type Library.
An archive of enlightening and entertaining articles about the innards of COM and OLE. Full listing here:
- COM Automation: Type Information (Part I)
- COM Automation: Type Information (Part II) - Highly Recommended
- COM Automation: Type Information (Part III)
- Introduction to COM - What It Is and How to Use It.
- Introduction to COM Part II - Behind the Scenes of a COM Server
A nicely written article by VB and Win32 author Daniel Appleman with an overview of calling members through IDispatch.
Two related posts on VBForums.com, with great detail on the memory layout of interfaces and VB object instances, and how to call hidden members of such objects. [VB6] Call Functions By Pointer (Universall DLL Calls) by LaVolpe, and VB6 LightWeight COM and vbFriendly-BaseInterfaces by Schmidt.
An amusing article about controls, sub-objects and implementing IPersistStream and IPersistPropertyBag, by VB and Win32 author Daniel Appleman.
The The Unofficial TypeLib Format Specification is available for download from TheirCorp
This is available in an HTML edition at this link.
See the first 2 articles by Tony Jollans referred to earlier in this document.
Microsoft's official documentation for the Compound Binary File Format
An nice overview of structured storage (PDF), written more clearly than the official Microsoft documentation, and with examples.
An overview whitepaper on persistence/serialization formats, with an emphasis on OLE Structured Storage, by Dan Appleman
Provides a detailed explanation on how things are done in classic COM and then show how it is done in the interop for .NET.
The WordBasic Help file hosted by WordMVP.com contains details on arguments for various Word dialogs when using VBA, that are missing from newer VBA documentation.
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