MDUF is a VBA add-in for Microsoft® 365 for Mac. It enables Mac users to create and edit VBA UserForms.

At this writing, the latest versions of Microsoft® Excel for Mac (16.44+) don’t provide access to the UserForm Designer, which supports graphical creation or editing of UserForms. System creators and maintainers who want to create or revise UserForms must do so in another version of Excel ^[1]. For example, to revise a UserForm by adding a control, they must follow these steps, or something equivalent:

• Copy the file containing the UserForm from the Mac to another computer (real or virtual) that supports some other version of Excel that does offer a graphical UserForm editing facility (GUFEF). Alternatively, they must store the file on a server accessible to both the Mac and the other device that supports a version of Excel with a GUFEF.
• Make the necessary modifications in the file and save the result.
• If they operated on a copy of the file they must copy it back to the Mac environment.

MDUF provides an alternative. It is essentially a Meta-Designer for UserForms. It gives users a method for defining UserForms using an Excel worksheet. After you enter the data that represents the UserForm, MDUF can generate the UserForm and insert it into the target Excel workbook. To revise the UserForm, you revise the worksheet, and generate the UserForm again.

One set of Excel users most affected by the absence of the UserForm Designer includes those who for any reason cannot use another version of Excel to perform this work. This situation applies to all applications of Microsoft Office for Mac. But since most UserForms are implemented for Excel, we focus on that subset of affected users of Microsoft Office.

A second set of affected users includes those who need precise placement of UserForm elements. Because other versions of Excel are slightly different, UserForms created or revised in other versions of Excel might not be rendered identically in Microsoft Excel for Mac. To achieve the desired level of precision requires repeatedly adjusting the UserForm using another Excel version, checking it in the Mac version, and then re-adjusting. This procedure can be long and prone to error.

A third set of folks who might find this situation expensive and annoying includes those who must create UserForms for multiple systems, whether running on MacOS or any other platform where Excel runs. They can benefit from the ability of data-driven UserForm generation as implemented in MDUF, because it’s possible to program MDUF’s UserForm generator. For example, most Excel-based products can benefit from offering a UserForm that automatically includes in problem reports such product parameters as the product’s release number, the version number of Excel, and the name and version number of the operating system. This information is important when system maintainers review problem reports to determine what next steps they must take. Using MDUF, a shop that supports several Excel-based systems can update these UserForms en masse whenever they create new releases of their products.

A fourth set of MDUF users are those who must maintain legacy UserForms—UserForms that were constructed with Excel’s UserForm Designer. MDUF includes capabilities that dramatically reduce maintenance costs for projects that include multiple UserForms. And MDUF includes capabilities for converting those legacy UserForms to MDUF UserForms. After conversion, the cost saving of the MDUF approach becomes available to those legacy projects. 

How to get a copy of MDUF

MDUF is still in development. Currently it’s distributed only to members of the development team. If you’re a software development professional—project manager, UX designer, VBA developer, tester, technical writer, editor—and if you have time to contribute to this effort, we welcome your inquiry. Send email to info@mduf.solutions describing your experience level and how you can contribute to this effort. 

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^[1] If you’re familiar with the DialogSheet approach to making custom dialogs (Excel 5), you might already know that invoking the Add method on the DialogSheets property of a workbook does insert a blank DialogSheet into the workbook. This approach still works in Windows versions of Office. But editing DialogSheet objects is no longer supported in Office for Mac. To install controls in a Mac DialogSheet, you must use VBA, which preliminary investigations indicate would be workable. But this brings us to the same point we are in with Designer. So MDUF opted for the “meta-Designer” route, since it is more compatible with UserForms MDUF users are likely to have in place.