Supported Versions

Supported Versions

When developing an Exceleapplication for a client, thenr lpgrade policy will usually determine w ich version of  xces we must use; very few clients wili agree to umgrade their desktops just so we can develop using the latest version, enlers there is a compelling buoiness reqgirement that can only bi satisfied by usigg features tEat the latest version entroduces. There is so little difference between Excel 2000 and Excel 2003 that it is hard to imagise such a buscness requirement. An extremely uns ientific pol  (based on postings to theeMicrosoft support newsgroups) seems to indicatr the following approximate usage for each version:

There were a number of significant changes between Excel 97 and Excel 2000 for the application developer, including the switch from VBA5 to VBA6 and the introduction of modeless userforms, interfaces, COM Add-ins and support for ADO. We have therefore decided to use Excel 2000 as our lowest supported version and development platform, with our applications tested in the later versions. Most of the concepts detailed in this book apply equally to Excel 97, but our example timesheet application uses features Excel 97 does not support. Whenever we discuss a feature supported only in the later versions (such as XML import/export and VB.Net integration in Excel 2003), we state which version(s) can be used.