Your Call to Action

This chapter has demonstrated how you can use VBA to write programs that use Google Web Services. It's essential to remember that the techniques in this chapter work with any application that supports VBA, not just Microsoft Office. The capabilities of the application also affect how you interact with Google Web Services. Yes, you can force a spreadsheet to act as a word processor, but the results usually aren't easy to use, flexible, or robust. Finally, this chapter demonstrates that you can do a lot more than just search using Google Web Services ”it definitely provides room for all kinds of application types.

It's your turn to begin creating macro add-ons that rely on Google Web Services for your favorite application. VBA is a very flexible programming language. When you couple this language with the unique functionality provided by a specific application, you can create robust add-ons using a minimum of code and time. Of course, you can't confuse theses addons with full-fledged applications ”the macro couples the add-on to the host application.

You might decide that you really do need a full-fledged application ”that working with a specific host application just won't work for your needs. Chapter 6 discusses techniques you can use to write full-fledged applications using Visual Studio. This chapter doesn't target a specific version of Visual Studio because many people don't have the latest product. Instead, the chapter discusses several languages included with both Visual Studio 6 and Visual Studio.NET so that you can choose the language that works best for your specific need.