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Is there a way to change the color scheme in the VBA editor that comes with Microsoft Office? I have been spending several hours lately working with VBA in Excel, and the bright white background is making my eyes sad. I know I can change the settings manually in the menu Tools-->Editor Options on the tab Editor Format, but I was hoping there was something like a themes plugin. I prefer a light-on-dark theme like Obsidian.

Is there a plugin for the VBA editor to change the color scheme?

Cody Piersall
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    Thanks for the link, @PowerUser. I did not realize that the VBA editor gets its default colors from the registry. – Cody Piersall Apr 19 '13 at 18:30
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    No problem. I was actually curious about it myself since I like black backgrounds. I googled it and, surprise, I found myself looking at another Stack Exchange site. – PowerUser Apr 19 '13 at 19:58
  • I went ahead and manually changed my background to grey; the frustrating part is that I had to change the background for each element (e.g. identifiers, keywords, comments, etc.) to grey so nothing had awkward, white highlighting. – Cody Piersall Apr 19 '13 at 23:41
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    Possible duplicate of [How can I use custom colours in the Microsoft VBA editor?](https://superuser.com/questions/313408/how-can-i-use-custom-colours-in-the-microsoft-vba-editor) – Raystafarian Jun 13 '18 at 01:02

2 Answers2

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Odd, when the question migrated over from SO, my first comment with the link was deleted. Here it is again:

How can I use custom colours in the Microsoft VBA editor?

Since you're manually changing everything, my only other suggestion is to make sure you don't accidentally make some highlighting color invisible against your new background.

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PowerUser
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Five years after the question, but worth checking... You wrote:

the bright white background is making my eyes sad

Don't address only the VBA editor, address the entire Windows session at once.

Use NegativeScreen open-source freeware to temporarily invert your entire Windows color scheme by transforming its colors. This will solve white background problem in all Windows apps at once.

  • Using a hotkey, you can enable/disable color transformation whenever you need it.

  • You can create your own color transformations to further aid your eyes - for example to decrease contrast. (Such a matrix is in this SuperUser answer.)

This solution is almost 100% reliable, because it uses functionality of built-in Magnifier accessibility tool which is implemented directly by the Microsoft so it has no quirks or strange side effects (what I can confirm from my few years' experience with its daily use).

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miroxlav
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