Analyze Your Application

A conversion, like any other software development project, should begin with a complete analysis of the requirements and an understanding of the development tools.

The first question to consider is whether your application or add-in needs to be converted at all. Most applications will run just fine in Microsoft Excel 97. Others may be completely replaceable without code by new features of the product. For example, it is common for custom applications to perform data validation of some sort using the OnEntry property of the Application object. Microsoft Excel 97 has a great data-validation feature built into it, so old validation routines may not be needed at all. Microsoft Excel 97 also offers conditional formatting, so you don't need to use code for that purpose anymore.

There are a few features that have changed significantly, so applications using them should be evaluated carefully:

• Routines that use 16-bit API calls must be rewritten to use 32-bit calls.
• Applications that access external data sources should be closely evaluated to determine if one of the newer data-access methods like DAO or RDO should be implemented.
• Applications that use custom menus will require slight modification and should be evaluated to determine that they behave as expected.

The first item will be addressed here. The other two will be discussed later in this document.