Place to send Microsoft suggestion on VBA IDE

[Isaac]

Is there a place that's recommended to send a suggestion to Microsoft that would be general to VBA IDE in general - wouldn't really matter if it were Access, Excel, etc?
I have often longed for a way to mark a block of code as a collapsible region, so to speak. So I don't have to page up/down so much.
I have also longed for brace-matching (highlight color).
Am I totally wasting my time? Curious if anyone else would find this helpful.

 

[pbaldy]

I believe they like their suggestions here:

UserVoice Roadmap

office365.uservoice.com

There may be a more appropriate uservoice section, that's just the first one I found.

 

[Isaac]

Ok thanks. I did a bit of searching but they all seemed program-specific, like Access. Thanks for that link.

 

[pbaldy]

No problem Issac. I've seen them refer people with suggestions to User Voice before, so I think that's their desired platform.

 

[isladogs]

The forthcoming Monaco code editor improvements already announced for Spring 2021 will, I believe, include colour matching
See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap

 

[Isaac]

Thanks,
From their description of it, "Use the embedded Monaco Editor, the same editor used for Visual Studio Code, in Access"
and then looking at this, if they are upgrading it to that level.........WOW. That would be amazing, perhaps even overwhelming at first!

The SQL aspect of it would make us super productive too - very great stuff!

 

[pbaldy]

Does that apply to the VBA editor? The name "Access: SQL Monaco Editor" would imply SQL only.

 

[Isaac]

Well, I guess that's what could be considered confusing. True, it's called SQL Monaco Editor, but then again they use the verbiage "the same editor used for Visual Studio Code" to describe it. If it was only for use in SQL context, why in the world would they refer to Visual Studio, rather than SQL Server Mgmt Studio?

And, when I find the github page about their Monaco Editor, it is indeed all about Visual Studio code, and has nothing to do specifically with SQL.
I think you can code T-SQL inside Visual Studio (somehow in some context), but that's certainly not the first thing that comes to mind!

If Monaco editor is only for SQL--in the Access context--then they sure chose a weird way to describe it.
Either way, glad I left a Post on that uservoice page, since my main desire did have to do with VBA. Can't hurt I guess.

 

[isladogs]

My understanding is that there is a separate VBA development team and that the VBE will not be affected by the new Monaco editor.
The quote below is from the Access team leader Ebo Quanseh

The Access team is adjusting our status for this request – we are planning to embed the Monaco Editor (support for SQL Editor improvements) into Access, to be released within the next semester (first half of 2021), which will provide capabilities such as syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, SQL comments, and more. We are excited to have this capability released by next year, and we appreciate the energy and enthusiasm on this feature request. We still have a long ways to go to improve our experience with SQL, so please stay tuned as we execute on this objective!
Thanks,
Ebo [MSFT]

 

[Isaac]

Thanks for the information.

 

[jdraw]

Isaac,
Have you tried Notepad++? It offers language selection (VB rather than vba) does some coloring and blocking.

 

[Isaac]

I do use it, for text editing mostly, and have tried it a handful of times for code. Maybe I'll give it another shot. I like to frequently compile to check for my dumb errors, as well as constantly have the object-model-related Intellisense available, but maybe Notepad++ will handle at least a portion of those things. Thanks.

 

[Pat Hartman]

My version of Access and other O365 components have a Feedback option in the backstage view. I would use that.