Customer Reviews

Excel 2002 Power Programming With VBA

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I am a real estate finance analyst and researcher who wanted more control over the manipulation of my data in Excel as well as learning how to create user forms. John Walkenbach's "Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA" was an informative and excellent resource that taught me most of what I was looking for. Walkenbach begins with a brief explanation of Excel and the fundamentals of object-oriented programming (OOP), which underpins VBA. The reader has to be patient and be willing to experiment; working through Walkenbach's examples with Excel open is almost a must.

There are several issues that I would like to point out. One reviewer was upset over the fact that Walkenbach did not offer some utilities from the book's CDs for free. I did not try any of the utilities because I was more interested in the book's actual contents and explanations. Walkenbach does, however, offer the reader a full and unrestricted PDF version of the book in the CD, which I think is mighty generous of him. Instead of lugging the +1,000 page book, I sometimes leave the PDF version on my laptop so I could always have it with me. Lastly, I use Excel 97 at work and Excel X on the Mac at home, and despite some minor incompatibility issues, I would say that the book for the most part could be used for all versions of Excel 97 and up.

BTW, I would also recommend "Excel 2002 VBA" by Bullen, Green, Bovey, and Rosenberg published by Worx Press for a more advanced treatment of VBA.

I went over this book twice. Although I believe I understood most of it, I am not yet a power programmer.
This book is an intermediate book on Excel programming. Don't expect to become an expert from it. The book is very well written and John Walkenbach writes in a way that no other programmer does. The book stimulates the interest of the reader into Excel. The examples are well explained. I did not give this book five stars because the Windows API is not explained in depth.
According to me the path of the books to Excel programming is:
1 Excel The Bible( the second half of the book)
2 Excel for Power Programmers
3 Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's reference
The last book in the list is not for inexperienced programmers and is not as pleasant to read( So do not start with it).
I also recommen Excel 2002 formulas if the would be programmer does not have an extensive experience in Excel

I got this book and the author's other on Formulas. Although I am only using Excel 2000, I got it because I would be using Excel 2002 in the future. With no experience in VBA for MS apps, I needed something to get me up and running with writing macros from scratch. Familiar with VB6 I figure I can pick VBA up easily. I had a book on VBA from SAMS teach yourself series some years back, which I found dry and useless. I had thrown it away so I got this book.

I was up and running in about two hours writing macros that would look down a column of data and find the last non-empty cell in a range that had empty cells between data cells. I also wrote macros to update a summary at the top of the worksheet depending on how much data was in a particular row and to advance to the next empty cell in a row after data was entered, assisting the user in entering/selecting data.

Excellent and easy to understand. The real meat doesn't start until Chapter 7 when VBA is introduced. Prior to that is a refresher on formulas and Excel itself. I'm results oriented so I skimmed up to Chapter 7 before looking for answers to my problem. I am only in Chapter 9, before userforms, which is overkill for my needs at work but I will begin tinkering since it'll be done on my own time. Highly recommended for those who need a good solid intro to VBA. If you know VB, it'll be cake walk. For those who don't, there are plenty of examples to help you out and remember to understand the Excel object model. You should be all set if you at least try some of the examples instead of staring at the print.

The only thing I think is missing is a listing of the methods and properties of the Excel object model. For that, I have "Excel 2002 VBA" by Wrox. Funny how I've only used that book for its listing in its appendix, which is several hundred pages long and easily worth the price of that book. But that's another review...

First of all, I am non-English speaker (forgive my English). I am an Electrical Engineer, not a programmer. But I have many years programming experiences in different languages (on my own!).

I have finished up to chapter 10. The contents are very light. It talks about very basic syntax that are almost the same in any language (e.g. C, Java, Perl C++...) It puts hundreds of pages that can be done in a half of the volumn. It does not tell you much about the object details. It seems to tell you to explore the objects and methods by recording macro and learning by trial and error. If so, I don't need this book.

First of all, time is money. I spent money, time to read hundreds of pages. The author suggests you to trial and error. I really don't think it is a very good book. But I still give 3 stars (I am quite geneous!)

Maybe most audiences of this book are never program in his/her life. This may be good for them. For someone who has experiences in programming. It is not very useful.

The author should really concentrate on objects and methods after some basic syntaxs. That is the most important. I can learn the syntax in few days. But I don't know much about all the objects and methods. Without knowing the objects and methods, nobody can do much. Just like learning English, you know all the Syntax but you don't know any WORDS and USAGE. What do you think you can write!

As someone who has some programming experience, this book was very helpful to me.
The project I am working on was already defined, and all I had to do was look in the books where an example was given or a syntax reference existed. Note that I used it in alongside O'Reilly Press' 'Writing Excel Macros with VBA'. Where certain areas aren't covered in this book (rare), there will almost ceratinly be something in the other.

As an intermediate level part-time but somewhat rusty programmer (mostly self-taught) of Java, C, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, Assembly and others, this book certainly had what I was looking for.
It offers useful language references and the descriptions are ample, although occasionally apparently useful methods that were covered in 'the other' book and were overlooked in this one; it's just not possible to include everything though, even in ~1000 pages.

It assumes some prior knowledge of programming techniques, and is therefore not for the absolute beginner, but will serve it's purpose very well indeed to the majority.

I would recommend this book all except the absolute beginner and the advanced programmer/expert (who probably wouldn't be reading this anyway!). Definatly worth the money.

I rarely buy books on the internet without having a good flick through them at the local bookshop first. In this case I would definatly advise likeminded thinkers to make an exception.

The included CDROM is worth it's weight in gold and is all too often a crucial ommission by authours/publishers. I can now take the book with me on my laptop in PDF format (hooray!) and all of the book examples are included too. BONUS!

I have the Excel 2000 edition of the book and like it very much. It's one of the best Excel VBA books I have. In the past I also read a few other good Excel VBA books, such as Simon Benninga's "Financial Modeling (2nd ed.)", S. Christian Albright's "VBA for Modelers - Developing Desision Support Systems with Microsoft Excel", Michael Kofler's "Definitive Guide to Excel VBA", John Green's "Excel 2000 VBA Programmer's Reference", and Eric Wells and Steve Harshbarger's "Excel 97 Developer's Handbook". All those book's author or co-author (except the last book I mentioned) cited John Walkenbach's book as major reference or recommended readers to read to learn more. When I saw the new edition displayed in book store (little earlier than Amazon.com), I just bought it. I still don't have Excel 2002 yet, but I already found some good stuff I can try on Excel 2000. However, I can't use the CD. I must type the code on VBE to try it.

John, if you read these reviews, ide just like to say well done!!
Ive got quite a few books on VBA but this is by far the best.Im by no means an Excel guru, but found myself being asked to automate lots of tasks in excel for a new job I had. Im a VB/Database programmer by trade and I needed a book to bring me upto speed with the Excel Object model. The book done this and taught me a whole lot more in the process. Its well presented and the examples are all "realworld" which I found really handy.
Fully recommended to any Excel/VBA beginner or reference for a guru.

For sure, this book has a really really exciting title, with words like power, vba and programming.

After reading the book, the reader can answer the question the author has: "why I wrote this book?". To glorify him obviously, since they're virtually everywhere I-do-this, I-do-that, I-show-you-this-and-that. The reader knows perferctly that this book has been written by the author (like any book!), so there's no need for this perpetual I-do-this things. Besides, the only element that matters is not the author bur the book itself. If you can stand this self-promotion, then the worst is yet to come.

This book has no real structure, making its use and finding information a true headache. The summary is a clear proof: part 1) some essential background, 2)excel application development, 3) VBA, 4) userforms, 5) advanced techniques, 6) developing applications, 7) others. Since part 2 is devoted to devlopping, why this subject should again comes in part 6? Besides, isn't the whole book dedicated to developing? Finding what you want, even in the detailed contents, is harsh and shows that there's no plan, but rather disseaminated pieces of information, just like the VBA help.

Instead of clearly dividing by general topic (variables, objects, methods...), the author has a special order where everything seems mixed and spread in the book. Here something about methods, then some chapters later, another thing about methods etc.

And the author, instead of devolping and insiting on crucial themes, like accessing and working with external data (e.g. Access), contents itself with a short paragraph saying: please refer to other books! However, this book devotes around 100 pages to worthless history (starting with VisiCalc in 1978!!!) and the like. Incredible! That some historical material exist, why not. But that this comes while the essential is not here, that's inadmissible. That's why what this product is supposed to give begins only at page 120.

Besides, the layout (font, colors...) makes this book very unpleasant to read, so you want to close it ASAP, which is not exactly a good point.

The 3-star ranking reflects the amount of data provided, and some good points.

If you want a true and efficient book on Excel VBA, go for Definitve guide to Excel VBA which is really worthwhile.

John Walkenbach is consistently rated the Number 1 writer on Excel and this latest edition fully justifies that rating. It's rare that an author can combine a fluid and easily readable text at this level of expertise. Hundreds of easily understandable examples. Builds up the basic principles and empowers further development. A compulsory reference with clearly marked differences between Excel 2002 and earlier versions. Beginners should buy John Walkenbach's Excel Bible Gold Edition first.

The book is poorly organized, and has a very high number of pages considering the amount of content. Of course, that means you can whip through 50-100 pages in each sitting, but you don't get that much out of it. What I found especially annoying was that there is a CD with utilities included, but if you want the source code for these utilities, you have to pay extra $. Also, there is amazing restrictive licensing agreement on the use of any code that appears on the CD (for example ".. you may not .. modify, adapt, or create derivative works based on this software"). This book is a pitch by the author to sell you one of his many other books or software products. The author is a one-man industry who writes one Excel book after another (21 books so far according to my Amazon.com search), and sells his own software on the side, and that's what he does for a living. I'm sure he makes a very good living at it, but I for one am sorry I purchased this book.