Customer Reviews

Excel 97 Programming for Windows For Dummies

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As an "intermediate" user of Excel, I needed a fairly easy to use book to help me get started with writing macros in Excel. This book fit my need very well. You will not by any means be an expert in Excel programming after you use this book, but you will definitely be able to write (not just record) macros with confidence as a result of this book. I recommend it highly as a first book for "beginner" to "intermediate" users of Excel who want to quickly begin writing their own macros.

This book is wonderful -- I was able to dig in right away! I had a huge data table of mixed text and numbers that I needed to rearrange for statistical analysis, and I was able to quickly learn enough VBA to program what I needed to get the job done. Now I have been going back through the book to find out what other neat stuff I can do -- I am learning a lot more about Excel along the way. I have wanted to know how to program Excel for a long time, and finally here is a very good way to help me learn without an enormous time investment. As I read the book, I get the feeling that I am sitting at a co-worker's desk and watching while he/she explains VBA to me. Very user-friendly. I originally had bought the Microsoft Step-by-Step book, but returned it after reading another review above. This ForDummies book is much better as a reference. One critique is that I would like to see an appendix with a listing of all posssible object properties and methods.

Despite the high recommendations of some other users, this book is not as helpful as I wanted. Yes, it gives a good overview of VBA programming in Excel, but it is short on detailed, technical information - the type of information you need in order to actually write workable code. It spends very little time talking about manipulating data within Excel. This book often refers the reader to the online help. If I wanted to use the online help I would not have bought a book. It also expects you to use the macro recorder as a crutch until you learn enough to write code on your own. A good book if you want a high level overview of VBA, but probably not if you need to write lines of code.

After reading 2 other excel programming books, I was left overwhelmed and frustrated. John's book is very well written and concise. It starts at the very basics, but still leads you though some fairly complex and very useful procedures. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to learn Excel programming. There is definitely something for everyone in this book

If you want to get your foot in the door with Excel VBA, this is the book to read. Look no further. No other excel programming book is as easy to read and follow as this one.

While good for beginners, I was dismayed at the lack of detail in this book. Often, it provided just enough information to get me interested but then left me hanging while referring me to the on-line documentation (that's why I bought a BOOK! )

There isn't much I can add to the previous reviewer's comments. This is simply the best book to learn Excel97 VBA (it blows Microsoft's Step-by-Step book out of the water).

I found this book easy to understand with practical examples to follow. I'm an advanced Excel user but a beginner at understanding visual basic. All I knew how to do was record and run macros, but this book taught me how to read, change and make helpful dialog boxes to go along with them in easy everyday language with practical examples.

Excel 97 Programming for Windows for Dummies is an excellent book for the Excel programming Novice. The book does a great job giving you a starting point that most VBA manuals and references do not. After becomming somewhat proficient writting macros the book doese not wear out it's usefulness as it can also be used as a somewhat clumbsy reference. The only shortfall in this book is that it doesn't provide reference more more excel commands that a user needs to make really useful macros (naming sheets, working with formulas, find functions, etc...). However, after mastering the material in this book and purchasing a VBA reference book there isn't any Excel challenge you can't overcome.

Ordinarily I don't think I'm enough of a dummy to want a for dummies book. However, with no programming experience and lots of fairly advanced knowledge of Excel, this book alone was enough to turn me loose on learning to program in VBA. I had previously figured out how to do some very minor editing on recorded macros, but that was pretty much it. On my very first project, the book gave me enough ideas and support to program a slick set of routines that ended up turning a 6-hours/day task into one that ran at the push of a button in 5 minutes. Maintainance of the reference lists I built to use with Do-Loops took another 10-15 minutes a day, mostly in communication with users of my output. When people at my company express an interest in learning to do the kind of thing I did, I point them to this title.

Contrary to the reviewer who didn't want to use Excel's macro recorder as a crutch, I found this the fastest easiest way to discover the correct syntax for unfamiliar commands. This way I didn't have to tear my hair out figuring out the right way to say what I was trying to do - unlike the Access VBA utilities I later moved on to.