Excel 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference Programmer to Programmer: Amazon.co.uk: John Green, Stephen Bullen, Rob Bovey, Michael Alexander: Books

Product Description

This book is aimed squarely at Excel users who want to harness the power of the VBA language in their Excel applications. At all times, the VBA language is presented in the context of Excel, not just as a general application programming language.

The book is loosely divided into three sections:

Primer (Chapter 1)
Working with Specific Objects (Chapters 2–27)
Object Model References (Appendices A–C)

The Primer has been written for those who are new to VBA programming and the Excel object model. It introduces the VBA language and the features of the language that are common to all VBA applications. It explains the relationship between collections, objects, properties, methods, and events and shows how to relate these concepts to Excel through its object model. It also shows how to use the Visual Basic Editor and its multitude of tools, including how to obtain help.

The middle section of the book takes the key objects in Excel and shows, through many practical examples, how to go about working with those objects. The techniques presented have been developed through the exchange of ideas of many talented Excel VBA programmers over many years and show the best way to gain access to workbooks, worksheets, charts, ranges, and so on. The emphasis is on efficiency—that is, how to write code that is readable and easy to maintain and that runs at maximum speed. In addition, the chapters devoted to accessing external databases detail techniques for accessing data in a range of formats.

The final four chapters of the book address the following advanced issues: linking Excel to the Internet, writing code for international compatibility, programming the Visual Basic Editor, and how to use the functions in the Win32 API (Windows 32–bit Application Programming Interface).

Finally, the appendices are a comprehensive reference to the Excel 2007 object model, as well as the Visual Basic Editor and Office object models. All the objects in the models are presented together with all their properties, methods, and events.

From the Back Cover

Get ready to take your Excel applications to the next level by harnessing the power of the VBA language. This comprehensive resource will help you gain more control over your spreadsheets by using VBA while also showing you how to develop more dynamic Excel applications for other users. From introductory concepts to advanced developer topics, it guides you through every aspect of Excel 2007, including the Ribbon and the XML file formats.

In order to master all of the new features of this program, you′ll find an introduction to VBA and details on how to use it to enhance Excel. You′ll then learn how to work with the key objects and uncover the best ways to gain access to workbooks, worksheets, charts, and more. And you′ll find out how to write code for international compatibility, program the Visual Basic Editor, and use the functions in the Win32 API, which will expand your Excel VBA programming skills.

What you will learn from this book

How to write code that is readable, easy to maintain, and runs at maximum speed
Tips for utilizing the Visual Basic® Editor and its multitude of tools
Techniques for accessing data in a range of formats
Ways to set up your applications and convert them to add–ins
How to manipulate the Office XML file formats
A thorough explanation of RibbonX
Best practices for managing external data and using OLAP data sources
Methods for effectively debugging your application
Tips for packaging and distributing customized applications to other users

Who is this book for?

This book is for Excel users and programmers from beginning to advanced. You should have a reasonable working knowledge of Excel and a full installation of the software.

Wrox Programmer′s References are designed to give the experienced developer straight facts on a new technology, without hype or unnecessary explanations. They deliver hard information with plenty of practical examples to help you apply new tools to your development projects today.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

Good but can do better 8 Mar 2010

By David Menezes

Format:Paperback

Prior to buying this, I had two other VBA books, Walkenbach's VBA for dummies and the same authors' Professional Excel Development 2nd Edition. I highlt recommend these books, but found that there's a gap in moving from the Dummies book up to the Professional Development Text.

I bought this book to fill the gap. While it does cover some of the aspects I was looking for - ribbon X and working with texst files it's tough to work through as you need to read all pages. The effort needed to get through sometimes seems too great and I find that I revert to looking at the other two books plus google searches. Perhaps I was spoiled by getting my hands on the other texts, but by cmoparison, their layout makes life much easier.

If I was asked again as to what's the best approach, I would have gone for Walkenbach's VBA Power Programming. There's a reasonable level of overlap with the Dummies book (which is a great intro to VBA), but his style of explaining how to do things, and use of many smaller examples is a real plus point

In summary, good but can do better.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Well written but lacking 25 July 2011

By Jamie

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Its hard to know where to place this book, it has pretensions of being an advanced reference book but really its best suited to the middle ground between beginner and intermediate. The main problem with it is that although its a huge book there is actually not that much in it, nearly 50% of the bulk is padded out pointlessly with the object model.. which is available from the excel help files and the MSDN anyway. The rest although good is little more than an introduction and taster of each subject.

Its hard to say who I can recommend this book too... the beginner will find the VBA introduction insufficient and the core topics such as the pivot tables, range object, worksheet and workbook objects just not covered in enough detail... the intermediate will find that the more advanced topics such as automation and connections etc really have no detail at all.

So for the beginner who has graduated from a good foundation book, such as Steven Roman's O'Reilly "Writing excel Macros", this may serve to introduce the more advanced topics and someone in that situation may find this book very illuminating without being too impenetrable... however I find I use it much less than I expect, 9 times out of 10 when I look something up it gives me the very basics but then I have to go away and look up useful detail elsewhere...

Don't buy this 12 Feb 2012

By Sl

I find this book not useful compared to the Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA by John Walkenbach which comes with a CD containing examples. As with this Excel 2007 book, I find it doesn't explain things clearly and I hardly got any useful information from it. I think even as a reference book, you would be better to buy one that comes with CD examples.