In the Excel community, I understand that there was a great deal of spirited discussion amongst the programmers at Microsoft and the Excel MVPs as to the issue of doing away with Visual Basic 6.0 and replacing it with Visual Basic .NET. What ended up happening was that Microsoft decided to retain the original Visual Basic 6.0 engine which was introduced to Excel 2003 and this same engine is still alive and well in Excel 2013.

Is this the same case for Access? In other words, the VBA that is in Access 2013 is really the Visual Basic 6.0 which was originally in Access 2003? Am I correct in making this assessment?

Also, will Microsoft change the engine in all of the Microsoft Office products in the next release of Office after Microsoft Office 2013? The implications here are significant, in that .NET is similar enough to Visual Basic that this would not present a problem to those of us who have somewhat simple databases that make a marginal use of VBA. However, more complex projects would require a migration plan. I welcome any thoughts or ideas that the Access Forum here on 599cd.com would have about this important issue.

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Reply from Richard Rost:

To the best of my knowledge the VBA used in Access up to 2013 is very similar to VB6. I don't know what Microsoft's plans are moving forward, beyond 2013, but I can't see them making a huge significant change to it any time soon.

Then again, Microsoft does love to just throw people in front of the bus... I would have never imagined they would have removed the START BUTTON from Windows, but they just did. So...?