Nearly two years ago, Microsoft announced that it was removing Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) from Office 2008 for Mac. A lot of people who rely on VBA, including myself, were pretty disappointed in Microsoft's short-sighted decision, despite the company's extensive technical explanations for why it had to be done.

But Microsoft has reversed course, announcing Tuesday that Visual Basic will return to Office for Mac with the next full release of the software. It's a great move, but it's unfortunate that users will need to wait for years before they can see the fruits of this decision.

In a conversation I had last week with officials from Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, they told me that when the company made the original decision in 2006, Office for Mac's developers truly believed that the era of VBA on the Mac was over.