If you do any serious VBA development, you should have heard, and installed, Office Automation Ltd’s Smart Indenter. If you haven’t you should! It is an exceptional FREE tool that helps properly indent your code to help with code legibility & standardization. It offers numerous customizable options to suit your specific needs.
That said, I recently tried installing on a machine with Office 2013 and it would not work!? What to do.
After so going back and forth with Mz-Tools (another must have VBA developer tool), I finally got it operational.
Now, I do not know exactly why or how, but the only conclusion I could come up with is the order of installation somehow fixes whatever the underlying problem is/was. You must install Mz-Tools first and then Smart Indenter. Smart Indenter on its’ own does not work, nor does installing Mz-Tools subsequently. After trying different variations, the one that appear to have “fixed” the problem was to uninstall the Smart Indenter & Mz-Tools, then reinstall Mz-Tools followed by Smart Indenter.
So the conclusion drawn from my experience, it would appear, is that Mz-Tools must be installed first!
If you have any insight into the nature of the problem (perhaps even an alternate solution) or if you can confirm my fix, please post a comment.
Update
Please refer to: Smart Indenter on Win 10 with Access 2013/2016 for another potential solution to getting Smart Indenter operational.
I was having the same problem and this fix worked for me.
I was also having this problem and Daniel’s solution worked for me. I uninstalled MZ Tools and Smart Indenter, then installed MZ tools followed by Smart Indenter install. Smart Indenter now works. Thanks Daniel for posting this great fix. This Smart Indenter is a fabulous tool.
Was able to get this working of Win10(x64) Office 2013(x32). The issue was with Msaddndr.dll that VBA indenter seems to reference. I had an older version installed and once I updated and registered the proper version, Indenter installed perfectly (or you can manually register the DLL). Here is the related MS KB article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2792179
My issue was reflected in the install log @ C:\Program Files (x86)\Office Automation\Smart Indenter\VBA6\INSTALL.LOG, “Could not Self-Register: C:\PROGRA~2\OFFICE~1\SMARTI~1\VBA6\INDENT~1.DLL”
Once this was done, didn’t matter what order the add-ins were installed. Hope this helps anyone in the same situation.
Wasn’t able to get it to work in Access 2016 (32-bit) running on Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit). When I open VBA editor I get error message: “Smart Indenter 3.5 could not load. Remove it from list of Add-Ins?”
I tried Daniel’s workaround: Uninstall Smart Indenter. Install MZ-Tools. Reinstall Smart Indenter. Didn’t work for me.
Also tried a different workaround I found on another blog: Uninstall Smart Indenter. Manually register MSADDNDR.dll (from VB 6.0). Reinstall Smart Indenter. Also didn’t work.
I also checked the Smart Indenter installation log and no errors were reported.
This is such an excellent, indispensable program, I can’t believe some other vendor hasn’t developed a similar add-in. I hear the original developer retired. Too bad he didn’t sell/give the rights to his code to someone who could update it. I know it’s been free, but I would gladly pay to have this tool back.
Mike,
Did you see my article Smart Indenter on Win 10 with Access 2013/2016?
I’m hoping that will get it operational for you! Please post back and let me know either way.
Using Windows 10 64-bit and Office 2013 32-bit, these instructions didn’t work.
This is what did and it did work:
1. Copy msaddndr.dll to the following location overwriting any existing msaddndr.dll file.
In a 32-bit version of an operating system:
%commonprogramfiles%\DESIGNER
In a 64-bit version of an operating system:
%commonprogramfiles(x86)%\DESIGNER
2. Install IndenterVBA.exe
You can copy msaddndr.dll from an old system or download it from http://www.dll-downloader.net/m/msaddndr-dll/
Thank you so very much for sharing. I’m sure it will help others in the same situation.
And yet NOBODY has created anything to indent 64 bit Access VBA.
Am I missing something here? Nobody else has this problem? It adds such a headache to my coding process to have to go through and do this- So, lots of times I don’t. My code is more bug-prone, because simple logic errors don’t fall out visually, and without the indentation it ends up looking very sloppy!
Help me Obiwan! You’re my only 64 Bit hope!
-Brian
The issue is 64bit is still not recommend and thus not dominant by any means.
I know MVPs had mentioned to Carlos (Mz-Tools creator) about adding this functionality to his add-in, but I’m not sure if it has been done or not.
Apparently it is now part of Mz-Tools (https://www.mztools.com/v8/features.aspx#LineIndenter), so you could take a look at that. It is a great add-in!
Also, did you send any feedback to the authors of Smart Indenter? That would probably be a good thing to do. Not only does it demonstrate that people appreciate their tool, but may motivate them to update it.