Is there a method for getting the Excel VBA IDE working with TFS 2010?

Question

I have team members that need to be able to checkin VBA modules/classes created in Excel 2007/2010.
I want to be able to use some TFS functionality, ideally from within the VBA IDE.

I don't want to checkin Excel files as artefacts. Ive seen the MSSCCI provider download from MS.

I don't think in this case the Windows shell extensions from the Power Toys helps because I don't want to have to create an additional process for developers to export and/or import class & module files from their work in VBA project maintenance.

Question: Can someone provide a way to use the MSSCCI provider with Excel 2007 (or even Excel 2010 only)? Do you think this would only be possible with custom VBA addin?

Update:

I've thought about using an approach such as making a custom VBA addin and adding some commands that make basic calls to the TFS client object model.

Just found this post from Codeproject from another question this time looking for the same thing but for SVN rather than TFS.

Answer 1

There is a Visual SorceSafe provider for VBE that comes with Office XP Developer. I used it for many years and still have it installed. It does what you want, but using VSS and not TFS.

Note that the product is not supported, but VBA/VBE has not changed since Office 2000. I used the provider for two years for Excel 2003 development with no problems.

I seem to remember recently an article describing how you can use VBA/VSS with the extra benefit of having the code also "posted" to TFS. Since I no longer professionally code in VBA/VSS, I didn't have a need for the article, but did find the topic interesting.

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Office XP Developer has a few other tools that make it worth the time to install.

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Access Source Code Control and Team Foundation Server

Today's guest writer is Mike Sullivan - a tester on the Access team

With the release of Visual Studio Team System 2008, we've recently received questions from several customers regarding whether or not Team Foundation Server (TFS) can act as a source code control provider for the Access source code control (SCC) component. The answer is yes!

Although many folks refer to Access’ source code control component as “SourceSafe integration,” that only tells part of the story. SCC integration within Access is fully compatible with any provider that implements the Microsoft Source Code Control Interface (MSSCCI). Although Visual SourceSafe is one of the more widely used MSSCCI providers, there are several other products that implement this interface, including Team Foundation Server 2005 & 2008 as well as IBM ClearCase.

However, MSSCCI support in Team Foundation Server is not native and requires an additional add-in available for download:

• MSSCCI Add-in for Team Foundation Server 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=87E1FFBD-A484-4C3A-8776-D560AB1E6198&displaylang=en

• MSSCCI Add-in for Team Foundation Server 2008 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=faeb7636-644e-451a-90d4-7947217da0e7&displaylang=en

Of course, to enable SCC functionality from within Access, you’ll also need the Source Code Control add-in. This shipped as a free download as a part of the Access Developer Extensions for Access 2007 and as a separate free add-in for Access 2003:

• Access 2007 Developer Extensions http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D96A8358-ECE4-4BEE-A844-F81856DCEB67&displaylang=en
• Access 2003 Source Code Control Add-in http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2ea45ff4-a916-48c5-8f84-44b91fa774bc&displaylang=en

If you’re interested in taking this configuration for a whirl, you might want to download the Team Foundation Server Virtual PC image that has been made available by the Visual Studio team. Included on this virtual PC are copies of Visual Studio Team System 2008 and Office 2007 Enterprise SP1 (though Access is not installed by default on this image – you’ll need to go to Add/Remove programs within Control panel and launch setup to install Access). This trial image is good through December 31, 2008.

To get the Virtual PC image working, you’ll also need to install the Access Developer Extensions (the MSSCCI add-in is preinstalled). Since VSS is the default MSSCCI provider on the machine, you’ll need to tweak a registry key to get Access to use Team Foundation instead:

Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SOURCECODECONTROLPROVIDER
Key: ProviderRegKey
Value: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider

Hopefully those of you curious about support for TFS have had your questions answered!