With the release of Office 2003, Microsoft has enhanced the ability of VB developers to build applications within Word and Excel by utilizing Visual Tools for Office (VTO). Working with VTO, developers will have the full features of Visual Studio .Net at their finger tips.
Although VTO provides Visual Studio .Net functionality, not all Office 2003 applications fully support .Net. Furthermore, VBA continues to be the language integrated into the suite. Good or bad, this is just how it is. As a result, VBA will continue to be a major factor with any Office Platform development endeavor.