Saving VBA customization to Normal.mxt

Question

I have experienced problems with saving VBA customization to a Normal.mxt document within ArcGIS 10.

I have a set of VBA macros developed originally within 9.3 version of ArcGIS that reside in a custom toolbar. These VBA forms, modules and customization have been saved within the Normal.mxt in ArcGIS version 9.3 and open and work fine while opening this Normal.mxt in ArcGIS 10.

Recently I developed an additional VBA macro (within ArcGIS 10) which works and adds fine to the customized toolbar, however I am unable to save customization permanently to this Normal.mxt in ArcGIS 10. Please note that Customize>Options "Save all customizations to the document" button is unchecked.

Despite saving changes to this Normal.mxt in Visual Basic Editor with a new macro/tool added to the customized toolbar, after closing and opening ArcGIS 10 again newly added macro/tool disappears from the customized toolbar.

However, the new tool is never saved permanently within the Normal.mxt. It appears that ArcGIS 10 has some issues with VBA customisations.

What could be the cause of it and how could it be resolved?

Answer 1

With ArcGIS 10.0, VBA is no longer officially supported. You can request a VBA license for 10.0 and 10.1, but ESRI is strongly pushing people to Arcpy and C#. Older documents will still function for backwards compatibility, but if you want to create new VBA, you'll need to get a VBA license from ESRI and install an extension.

See ESRI's blog post about it here: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/01/11/vba-licensing-at-arcgis-10