Good introduction for VBA in Excel
I started my VBA programming from zero for my department needs by using Google search. Although the job could be done, the process was time consuming (for search) and left questions unanswered.
If you want to save yourself time then this is a good book to start with. The layout is pretty good, and explain things clearly. I browsed the book but didn't read every chapter but found it's informative.
Don't expect to receive a lot of examples, but again you can find everything you need through web search.
Advance users should look for something else, like Professional Excel Development: The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications (which I owned too).
I seldom bought computer books for long time (hey, educated by web search is free) since it's expensive and out-date too quickly. This book and above are what I'm willing to invest my money in for past few years. Beside, Amazon price is very competitive.
Very good on the whole
Still not finished, but I have been mostly very happy with the book so far. The section on automation was a key interest, and proved valuable, though I was hoping for more on the shell function, and identifying the correct string to open a wider variety of applications.
I was confused with a comment in chapter 17 concerning security popups in Outlook, that...
"When Excel attempts to send an e-mail message using Outlook, the application responds with a message to ask permission, as shown in Figure 17-12. The only way to prevent this message from coming up is by setting the macro security setting to low."
My experience to date is that digitally signing the project prevents the popups from Outlook 2003, even if the project is located in Excel. I haven't yet come to any section of the book that covers digital signatures, and the assertion that the only solution is to take the ill advised step of setting macro security to low makes me suspect that it might not be forthcoming.
Chapter 12 provided a lot of detail on interacting with Access, but some of the code seemed untested (undeclared variable and mis-spelled arguments in the two CreateTextFile subs). The chapter works as a good reference, but made for difficult reading.
Despite the above gripes, I have learned a tremendous amount from the book so far, and am anxious to come back for more. I liked the chapter on Class Modules, thought the native file handling in VBA was very well covered, learned a lot in the material on the Windows Scripting Host, and feel the text builds nicely from the basic to more involved topics. All in all one of the better VBA books I have read.
(2 reviews)
