Excel 2000 Developer's Handbook [Paperback]

Marion Cottingham (Author)

Book Description

Series: Handbook | Publication Date: July 1999

An introduction to Excel VBA programming. The text shows developers how to create timesaving, productivity-enhancing macros based on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and write code in VBA. It shows how to make bug-free forms and graphs by automating a spreadsheet using VBA. A CD is included.

Product Details

• Paperback: 862 pages
• Publisher: Sybex Inc (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782123287
• ISBN-13: 978-0782123289
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,837,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Desperately Seeking an Editor!, January 22, 2000

By 

Leo P. Vaulin (Mobile, Alabama) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Excel 2000 Developer's Handbook (Paperback)

This book is terribly organized. Even after you've read it several times, you will still have trouble finding anything in it.

The author seems to know her material, but the presentation is so poorly organized that she fails to effectively transfer her knowledge and experience.

Let's start with the chapter organization. The author starts with the subject of the chapter, then wanders off into a discussion of what is, at best, very remotely related material. For example, Chapter 2 is supposed to discuss comments (why? who cares about comments in a book about programming VBA?). She spends 20 pages on attaching comments to cells (snooze!), then suddenly devotes the rest of the chapter to the implementation of VB controls (about 30 pages, far more interesting). From the title of the chapter, you would never guess what was really hiding in there. Would it not have made more sense to organize the chapter around VB controls, and leave any discussion of comments (if you must) as illustrations for some of the principles introduced.

The index is even worse. I remembered reading something useful in a different chapter that, of course, had nothing to do with the useful nugget I was looking for. There was absolutely no hint of the topic, under any related name, whatsoever, in the index. An example - I needed to look up some syntax for the declaration of variables in a procedure. There is no index entry for "declaration", or the "DIM" command, or even the word "variables". On the other hand, there are 27 index entries under the topic of "comments", such as "comments - single quote and" or "comments - reviewing toolbar and - buttons of" (3 levels! lots of detail!).

One gets the feeling that the editor at SYBEX didn't have a clue, and used some auto-indexing routine that generated a totally useless index.

This book needs to be fed into a Pivot Table and completely re-sorted by someone who knows what they're doing.

SYBEX, I want my money back!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Should Be "Excel 2000 User's Handbook", October 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Excel 2000 Developer's Handbook (Paperback)

When you use "Developer" you expect to find out something about the program that is not contained in other books. This was not the case here. The book spends a good three-hundred pages going through Excel conventions that could be considered "groundwork" for development but also "User's" material. The book never really get's beyond the "groundwork", however. I learned nothing that I couldn't have figured out with MSDN and some "hacking around."

Get Using Excel Visual Basic For Application by Jeff Webb for great introduction to Excel Development.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Useful but no developers handbook..., November 11, 2000

By 

Laurens (Dordrecht, Zuid-Holland Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Excel 2000 Developer's Handbook (Paperback)

Deliriously happy with my Access2000 Developer's Handbook set I bought this book without looking any further convinced the DevH series are the best... and they are... just not for Excel. Calling this a developers handbook insults any serious developer. Don't get me wrong, this IS a good book on Excel, it just worthless if you want to get some real coding going on there.