Customer Reviews

Access 97 Macro & VBA Handbook

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When I flipped through the book in the store, it looked pretty good, better than the other book I looked at. (Access 97 Power Programming) Unfortunately, once I got down to using it, it left a lot to be desired. The main thing I was hoping for was a good, in depth, lesson on DAO. The examples are about on par with the ones in the online help, ie. they cover the trivial case, but don't really help with more typical cases. Also, as mentioned by someone else, there are far to many typos, especially in the examples. I didn't come close to trying every example, but there were several that didn't work as printed. Finally, why were the tables and appendices put on the CD instead of in the book where they belong? For the first day I had the book, I couldn't look at any of the tables, since my computer at work doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. All in all, it's not a bad book, but I can't recommend it at its full retail price. By the time bookstores are blowing it out cheap, it'll be 3 versions out of date, so there's really no reason not to buy something else.

I read and enjoyed Novalis' earlier Access book on Macros; the only one written specifically on that subject. Once past the first 90-100 pages, she hit a stride of good detail and useful specifics. I expected the same from this Access 97 book. I was wrong. Too often, pages go by without specific examples (especially in macros section). It really breaks down in the VBA section; there are lots of sample code, but virtually no detailed explanation of the statements -- her code samples are completely devoid of line-by-line (or section-by-section) documentation that in real life you would hope a programmer to include, especially for learning purposes. Unfortunately, it's as though Novalis rushed the book into print. It still has useful information, but seems to lack the clarity of purpose, the specifics targeted for learning purposes, and the tied-together presentation of subject matter found in her earlier book. She still includes quite a bit of information, but it is a struggle to find it, and then to really learn from it.

I wish I would have read the reviews here (particularly the one about a wasted tree) before I shelled out my money to buy this (God I hate to use the word) book. The authors writing style is boring and tedious. The author has not included enough quality code examples, and instead, has opted to include countless screen images that do little more than take up page space.

If you understand basic database concepts and want to make your applications more sophisticated by learning VBA for Access 97, this is the perfect book. I found the Access 97 Developer's Handbook helpful, but too advanced to get much out of it. This book helped me to make use of the Developer's Handbook and develop much better applications. I highly recommend it.

An ideal reader of this book should have quite some knowledge of table, query, form and report design, but no macro and module design experience. That's when this book is a real eye-opener. It assumes no previous knowledge of VBA and it starts of with basic things--Access and DAO object model, introduction to events, etc. Then, it went on to identifiers(i.e. how do you reference fields, controls, etc), and only THEN it goes on to programming techniques like if..then and other decision structures, a heavy chunk of DAO, a bit of SQL, and some other useful stuff. What's not excusable, however is that this book has some typos not only on the pages, but in the code. Although the mistakes are correctable with some common sence, this has prevented the book from receiving 5 stars from me.

This is another example of wasted effort by both author and reader. The reader gets a big thick volume that can be used as a paper weight or door stop. The author came up with a good title that will appeal to many Access knowledge seekers. Too bad the author did not spend more time developing usable examples and step by step instructions that teach VBA/Macros for Access. The VBA sections are very shallow for the size of the book. If you want to learn Access Macros or VBA go to another source. Nobody seems to be able to handle this subject on the 4 or 5 star level. Maybe someday someone will write a book that is useful to the Access programmer who wants to go beyond the simple examples included in most books in print today.

It covers alot of topics , but the details and description did not always flow well. It was in essence, hard to follow due to the book layout. Don't use this if you are planning to learn. It works better as a refernce.

This could have been a good book, but Query by Form does not work as described in the book. Page 395 indicates that you can choose the Remove Filter/Sort command in the Records menu... and all records are displayed. Not true. Also, automated filter removal using macros (chapter 9) and DoCmd (chapter 18) do not work. You cannot drag Customer ID from the field list to the form, it is not in the list using the database on the supplied CD. Too many errors and omissions to be a usefull book.

This book (unlike many other programming books) does not assume you already know how to program, and just need pointers on the syntax of the specific language. It actually teaches you how to program in Access VBA from the ground up, and goes right on through to fairly advanced programming. An excellent book for beginners to intermediate programmers alike. It also covers writing Access macros to a level of sophistication far beyond what is usually covered in Access books

Switching from Cobol to Access VBA was a daunting task, but this text gave me an extremely thorough basis and brought me up to an intermediate level that a college class in standalone VB did not. I especially appreciated the detail of the compairison between using macros versus using VBA. The example of dyncamically creating a control (while my program is running) was exactly what my shop needed, and exploded the possibilities where I could go with Access. Understanding scope, passing parameters, dynamic arrays, functions, custom data types, clones were all contained in examples I could understand. I would not even waste my time writing this if this book was not top flight.