pyVBAReference

A complete, machine-generated reference of the VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) object models for ten common COM type libraries. Every public type is exported as both human-readable Markdown and machine-readable JSON.

Layout

All generated data lives under reference/ to keep the repo root clean:

reference/
  agentic_llm_primer.md  guide for AI agents (schema + grounding)
  index.json             master catalog of every library and type
  members.json           member name -> the types that define it
  <library>/
    md/     one .md per type   + _index.md
    json/   one .json per type + _index.json

Both md/ and json/ hold the same data: signatures, return types, parameter lists, property access modes, enum values, remarks, and examples - introspected from the registered COM type libraries and enriched with descriptions from Microsoft Learn.

Libraries

Folder	Library	Types
excel	Microsoft Excel 16.0 Object Library	1028
office	Microsoft Office 16.0 Object Library	510
msforms	Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library	166
adodb	Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 6.1 Library	110
msxml	Microsoft XML, v6.0	101
vbide	Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility	46
scripting	Microsoft Scripting Runtime	28
vba	Visual Basic For Applications (language built-ins)	26
stdole	OLE Automation	11
winhttp	Microsoft WinHTTP Services, version 5.1	7

VBA language built-ins (MsgBox, Format, CStr, vbCrLf, ...) live in the vba library, grouped into modules such as Interaction and Strings.

Finding something

• Don't know which type owns a member? Check reference/members.json - it maps every member name to the types that define it.
• Want the full catalog? See reference/index.json - all libraries and types.
• Know the type name? Open reference/<library>/md/<TypeName>.md.
• Browsing one library? Start at reference/<library>/md/_index.md.
• A global function (e.g. MsgBox)? It's in a module under reference/vba/ - MsgBox is in reference/vba/md/Interaction.md.
• A constant's value (e.g. xlCSV)? See the enum file, e.g. reference/excel/md/XlFileFormat.md.

Regenerating

Requires Windows with Microsoft Office installed and pywin32:

.venv\Scripts\python.exe scrape_excel_object_model.py

Flags: --no-enrich (signatures only, skip Microsoft Learn text) and --refresh-docs (force re-download of the documentation corpus).

For AI agents

See agentic_llm_primer.md for the JSON schema and guidance on grounding VBA code against this reference.

Python library

The same data is exposed as an installable, typed Python package, vba_reference. The JSON is bundled into the wheel, so an installed copy is self-contained; in this repo it reads the generated folders directly.

pip install -e .          # from this repo (editable)
# or: pip install vba-reference

import vba_reference as vba

vba.library_names()                          # ['excel', 'office', 'vba', ...]
ws = vba.get_type("Worksheet")               # TypeDoc (case-insensitive)
print(ws.remarks)
protect = ws.member("Protect")               # Member
[(p.name, p.optional) for p in protect.parameters]

vba.find_members("MsgBox")                    # -> [MemberRef(library='vba', type='Interaction', ...)]
vba.find_members("SaveAs")                    # every type that defines SaveAs
vba.get_constant("XlFileFormat", "xlCSV").value   # 6

Command-line interface (vba-ref once installed, or python -m vba_reference):

vba-ref libs                     # list libraries and type counts
vba-ref where MsgBox             # where a member/type is defined
vba-ref type Worksheet           # full type entry
vba-ref member Worksheet Protect # one member with parameter docs