FYI: Test your VBA coding skills and win!

Here is a news for you… MSDN® is sponsoring a coding contest for Office 2007, named OfficePalooza! This international contest will run for two weeks beginning April 20, 2009, and features ten fun Visual Basic of Applications™ (VBA) coding challenges in the form of puzzles and games. Each entrant will earn a chance to win one of hundreds of available prizes, determined by a random drawing at the end of the contest.

In conjunction with this contest, an Advanced Business User theme will run on Microsoft Office Online from mid-April to mid-May, and will showcase the automation and extensibility aspects of Office 2007 through macros, custom VBA coding, the Fluent UI, and Office Open XML.  This collaborative effort will also highlight existing and newly-created content on the MSDN Microsoft Office Developer Center.

“One important goal of this outreach effort is to familiarize the advanced business user with the incredible depth, breadth, and variety of content that can help them expand their knowledge and skills.” notes Eric White, Technical Evangelist in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group for Microsoft Office. “There are articles, multimedia demos and webcasts, advice columns, forums, downloads and more. This content is designed to increase the user’s efficiency and effectiveness with Office 2007, and covers a spectrum including the beginner macro creator, the experienced VBA coder, and even the professional software developer. This effort also highlights some of the new capabilities and features of the 2007 Office System, such as the Office Fluent UI and the Office Open XML file formats.”

Happy Coding!