Developer William Smith‑Edward released XLIDE, a VS Code extension that lets engineers edit Excel VBA modules without launching Office. The sidebar tree lists .bas, .cls and .frm files, while full language features—syntax highlighting, go‑to definition, find references and rename—operate on a virtual file system. Pressing Ctrl+S writes changes straight back into the .xlsm workbook. It also hooks into GitHub Copilot for AI‑assisted code suggestions during editing.

XLIDE runs a persistent Python process that bridges VS Code to the VBA binary via pyOpenVBA and openpyxl, eliminating COM automation and any Office install. Compatible with Windows, macOS, Linux and remote containers, it requires VS Code 1.95+ and Python 3.10+. The extension registers a custom xlide‑vba:// URI, exposing JSON‑RPC methods for module listing, reading, writing and cell manipulation, all visible to GitHub Copilot through the LanguageModel API.

Live Share support is limited: hosts can edit and save VBA modules, while guests only view buffers already opened by the host. The extension’s export configuration stores per‑workbook settings beside the file, enabling deterministic sync of module files. XLIDE thus brings full‑featured VBA development into modern code editors without sacrificing portability seamlessly.