Customer Reviews

Excel 2000 VBA Programmers Reference

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Pages 7-254 cover EXCEL and VBA. Pages 257-264 cover "international issues", which has a limited audience in the USA. Pages 289-321 deal with the VBE. Pages 345-630 are a listing of the EXCEL Object Model, which I find none too useful. Likewise, pages 665-695 list the VBE Object Model, again not too useful to me.

This book can be compared to Kofler "Definitive Guide to EXCEL VBA", which is 776 pages of exposition and pages 777-834 a listing of the most useful parts of the EXCEL Object Model, ADO, MS forms, Office, Binder, Scripting, VBA and VBE. Thus, you get a much more extensive discussion of how things work and how things fit together than is found in Green (or in Walkenbach, for that matter). Kofler also deals with international issues here and there. However, Green is a lot cheaper, and sometimes its compactness makes it easier to find things.

Bottom line: Buy Green first (cheapest), Kofler second and Walkenbach last

AT LAST!!!, a reliable reference BOOK. A self-taught VBA programmer, I know well the frustration of relying on Microsoft's 'help' for Visual Basic in Excel. Not knowing what to ask makes Microsoft's search engines just about useless, and the use of generic names for objects and variables in examples only adds to the confusion. Microsoft's 'on-line' manual lacks detail, adequate exemples, and is cumbersum when trying to review a previous sections.

Green's Excel 2000 VBA Programmers Reference has opened an entire new world for me as a programmer. Green approaches Excel 2000 VBA assuming the reader knows nothing. He presents one simple block of information at a time in a logical, building-block outline and avoids overwhelming the reader. His examples use actual code that when typed in, provide an instant result.

Green does a fair job in the daunting task of providing a quick reference to code through logical grouping, Table of Contents, Index, and page headings. However, to achieve the best results from Green's book, the reader must 'read' the book from start to finish otherwise, you'll be just as lost, maybe not as confused, as using Microsoft's on-line help. Green's organization is such that once finished, the reader will at least know which chapter to start looking for the right information.

I have been an avid supporter of Microsoft Office suites and firmly believe their potential goes largely untapped by businesses costing them thousands, if not millions of dollars in lost production and through the purchase of software which can be done by MS Office. Green's book allowed me to compose a script which translated data from an old database management system to a new system - a process which was quite complex in some areas. This self-help endeavor saved my company several thousand dollars in paying for the vendor to perform the work.

Just getting started, then get Green's book and invest in a few Post-It's to mark the really useful sections. You win, your company wins.

As a professional VBA programmer, I found this book to be an excellent reference. Although I use Excel 97, many of the programming concepts are the same as for Excel 2000. Each chapter maps well onto real-world issues that are likely to come up in an intensive programming environment. A good example of this is the chapter on International issues: I have recently been involved in developing a system installed in several countries across Europe, where the users previously had to switch to UK settings in order for the system to work. The book is not intended as a 'learn to program' guide, a genre which is too heavily catered for already, rather as a programmer's reference laid out in such a way as to find solutions to real-world problems quickly.

Those with no programming backround may find this a little advanced. I first read Walkenbach's Power Programming for Excel 2000 which was very good and then followed with this book so I had some familiarity of the subject matter. I found this book very helpful in teaching me some useful techniques dealing with range names, custom menus, error routines and the Excel 2000 Object Model. Most of the chapters require a solid effort in reading the material and experimenting to really understand it. They also have a website (Wrox.com) that allows you to download code so you don't have to key it in (although I found keying it in helpful toward learning).
Overall, it's not a book to be read casually but requires time, patience and focus. The best approach if you're trying to teach yourself is to read a couple of pages per day AND even if you are an experienced VBA programmer to start with Chapter 1, History of Spreadsheets followed by Chapter 2, Primer for Excel VBA. There's usually a trick or technique that you can pick up that you didn't know prior. Then continue with each chapter after that. Also it is helpful to go back and read the early chapters again as your skill level improves. I found this approach to be a good self teaching tool.

The index falls a little short so the idea of using it as a reference without reading it first will probably not work too well. I think it is better suited as a teaching book that flows logically so you have to be willing to devote the time necessary to each chapter. I usually put a check mark in the margin indicating that I read the material which was helpful if I was away from it for a few days.
I would highly recommend this book to those who are serious about improving their skill as an Excel VBA programer.

This book would have gotten 4 stars from me if it were not for the index. For example, in one short block of code, I tried looking up Resize, What:, LookAt, xlWhole, LookIn, and Is Nothing. Resize is found in the index under "Range," and the only reason I found it is that they are both under "R." As for the others, I have no idea where to find them in the book. Or try looking up less obscure items like Offset, Integer, InStr, GetName, or Get anything (there are no listings for "G" in the index). With the ability to create a computerized index, there is no excuse for this laziness. It cuts the usefulness of the book in half. You need another book with a good index to find almost anything.

If you are relentless in finding a solution, you can slog your way through this book a page at a time, and you just might find exactly what you need. But then again, you might not.

I've just started my Ph.D. and bought Excel 2000 VBA to help me get to grips with processing my data files. My first impression was of a book that is jam-packed with information, although the smallish typeface may be off-putting to some at first. My second impression was that John Green and his crew are a bunch of mind-readers. Every code sample seems to address exactly the sorts of problems that I had been pondering for the past month. This was my first book on VBA, and it has really opened up the topic for me. On the strength of it bought Word 2000 VBA by Duncan McKenzie (with which I am also very pleased).

I have been writing Excel-based VBA applications for years and always struggled to find a good reference for various functions, properties, and objects. I recently moved up from Excel 97 to Excel 2000 and was struggling. I had continued to use my old Excel 5.0 references because I had trouble finding newer ones that contained substabtial information. Some of my old VBA code wasn't working in Excel 2000 (VBA has been enhanced considerably since Excel 5.0)so I was stuck. I found this book listed at Amazon.com and ordered it as a trial. If you're an Excel 2000 user who writes a lot of VBA code, this book is the reference I recommend. There are some reviews here that complain about the format of this book not matching other Wrox publications and being harder to use. That may be true - I haven't used other Wrox publications - but I found everything I needed and a few extras in here. It's not the only Excel 2000 VBA reference I have on my shelf - check out Microsoft Excel 2000 Power Programming with VBA by John Walkenbach and SAMS Teach Yourself Excel 2000 Programming in 21 Days by Matthew Harris - they're both good references as well.

By far my favorite programming book, and here's my explanation:

I'm not sure if some of the people reviewing this book were supposed to be reading John Green's "Excel 2000 VBA : Programmers Reference" in the first place. If you have never used Excel, or never written your own script or program before, THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU. This book was written for those who are either knowledgeable in Excel, wishing to learn programming, or vice versa, and its BY FAR THE BEST way to get there.

To give this book anything less than four stars (and I personally give it five) shows a complete lack of basic Excel and/or programming comprehension.

Excel 2000 VBA: Programmer's Reference starts with the basic concepts of functions (Subs), variables, loops, if statements, etc. But just like any other book from any other programming languange, don't expect to be fluent after reading the first 2 chapters.

Take time each day to read as much as you can, and run the examples in the VB editor. I have done 90% of the examples in the book, adapting many of them for my own use. Studying this text cover to cover is the best way to read it, as it is structured much like any college math course, where each chapter builds upon the chapter that precedes it. So avoid reading this book like an encyclopędia, as it will leave holes in your knowledge of the Excel Object Model.

The in-depth explanations of advanced concepts such as dynamic arrays, object referencing, names, API calls, and many more untapped resources of Excel are what make this book head and shoulders above the rest.

The index can be problematic for those not experienced in Object-Oriented programming, as it is organized by object types, and not alphabetically by each object. This thinking follows much more along that of a native programmer, so to proggers goes the advantage, but at the same time, press F2 within the Excel VBA editor, and you can read definitions for any object alphabetically. I believe John Green organized the index as it is intentionally, knowing that those not familiar with Excel could fall back on the Object reference in the VBA editor (via F2 on keyboard).

I think it is a shame that this book received several bads reviews, because in reading their posts, it seemed that not one of them should have been reading this book in the first place. It is a "Programmer Reference" as the name suggests. To those who didn't understand the most basic programming concepts and still decided to purchase the book, that is simply your fault for not reading the title, and is not the fault of John Green, whose masterpiece is a credit to the programming world at large, and another triumph WRT Excel.

Bravo, John... Bravo...

I recently changed from Lotus (in which I developed applications in macros) to Excel 97.

This book allows me to answer almost all my questions when writing macros in Excel. The examples gave me a leap in the time to develop an application.

If I have to buy only one book to help me write Excel VBA macros, this is the book to buy.

The only items to be improved is the index, which should be expanded and the font, which for me is too small.

The authors John Green, Stephen Bullen and Felipe Martins are excellent.

This is obviously a WROX attempt at creating an O'Reilly "Nutshell" book and I think they did a great job, sans the index which is totally awful. NOTE: While I don't have it, the index for the comparable WROX book for Excel XP/2002 looked 200% better. Nonetheless it is what it is, a REFERENCE book with the bonus that you don't normally see in O'Reilly books, of an in-depth explanation of some of Excel's object models in the earlier chapters. The chapters on the Range object model are worth the cost alone!

I had VBA experience with Access but very little with Excel. Within 1 month of utilizing this book, I was able to to show my employer that I deserved the new consultation job at a major pharmaceutical company and got it.

While the index is very poor, this is an excellent REFERENCE book, even for beginners and those working with Excel 97. Most of what is in the book applies to '97 as well. The price, like most WROX books, is also very reasonable, especially for the content. You will need an Internet Service Provider to download the code examples in the earlier parts of the book though, another reason it only gets 4 stars. I don't agree, especially since anyone can buy a burnable CD for less than .25 now, with the philosophy that it substantially adds to the cost. Given most book publishers inclusion of a CD, I would think WROX would augment the quality of their publications by including the CD of source code/information for a nominal increased price. The costs involved are extremely reasonable to the business standards of their industry.