Excel VBA Macro Programming [Paperback]

Richard Shepherd (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0072231440 | ISBN-13: 978-0072231441 | Publication Date: January 5, 2004 | Edition: 1

Make Excel work harder and faster for you. This unique book presents sample code for more than twenty practical, high-powered Excel VBA macro applications. You’ll get all the essentials of VBA, and then explore ways to power Excel with VBA. Automate tasks, convert numbers to labels, transpose cells, add formula details, globally changes values, and much, much more.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Develop powerful, custom Excel applications using Visual Basic for Applications Maximize the features and functionality of Excel with help from this unique resource designed specifically for power users. Inside, you’ll find complete details on Excel VBA programming and application development--from the fundamentals to advanced techniques. Then, you’ll get 21 real-world projects, complete with working code, so you can create Excel VBA macros right away. These projects include everything from setting up timed events to auto totaling a matrix of numbers to altering the appearance of spreadsheet components--and much more.

• Write and debug VBA code
• Create custom dialog boxes and toolbars
• Take advantage of the Excel object model
• Write code to interact with a database
• Use application programming interface (API) calls
• Create and use class modules
• Develop unique menus within the Excel menu structure
• Expand calculation and search functions
• Write macros for customized worksheets
• Create full-fledged Excel add-ins

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Richard Shepherd has been developing software for blue-chip corporations for 20 years. He has produced VBA code in Excel for major projects, including profit-and-loss reporting and business planning and budgeting.

About the Author

Richard Shepherd (Reading, Berkshire, England) is a qualified accountant with a special interest in computer languages, particularly Visual Basic, and he’s spent the last 20 years developing computer software in blue chip organizations.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (January 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072231440
• ISBN-13: 978-0072231441
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #776,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth buying, June 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Excel VBA Macro Programming (Paperback)

This book has opened up a whole new area of Excel for me. I can now do anything in VBA code within an Excel spreadsheet! My friends at work have become impressed with my Excel code. Recently, my boss was given a spreadsheet with similar information on 50 sheets within one file and he wanted to see it all on one sheet going downwards. Within 15 minutes I was able to produce VBA code to do this transition - he was over the moon!

I work in accountancy so I use Excel spreadsheets very frequently. However, I had only been able to record macros and did not have any understanding of how they worked. This book has taken me from the very basics through to some very complicated code and creating a professional add in file. I found everything was well explained and plenty of working examples were used. It shows how to build GUI interfaces which look really professional.

It describes the Excel Object model in very good detail - I have now realised that the object model is at the heart of the code and you need a very good understanding of this in order to start writing code for Excel. Two chapters are devoted to this.

There are a huge number of tricks explained in this book some of which could be described as hacks. I found out how to copy and view a hidden worksheet which was password protected simply using commands in the object model.

This has certainly whetted my appetite for Excel VBA

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular, January 22, 2006

By 

Will V (IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Excel VBA Macro Programming (Paperback)

The best book I have found on Excel VBA. Pure in depth explanation, no silly anecdotes, and plenty of examples. plus half the price of others! Shepherd takes 40 pages to deal with the object model at the heart of VBA programming (other books try to do this in 5 pages) and includes examples of how to automate other Office applications from Excel. This book also covers the more advanced topics like charts, linking to databases, class modules, and API (Application Programming Interface) calls. Ever tried to play a sound file from an Excel macro? VBA has no command to do this, but Shepherd shows the way. If you want to learn VBA this is the one.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book, May 9, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Excel VBA Macro Programming (Paperback)

An excellent book on Excel VBA. Easy to read without any waffle, and plenty of example code and pictures to take you through each subject which I really like.

There are also 21 example projects which start off simply and then work through to more complicated listings, some of which cover several pages of code and include construction of GUI interfaces. All the code is thoroughly explained and is easy to follow through. Several cool topics are included here - I loved the one on how to change shapes of comment boxes.

The final chapter draws all these projects into a professional Excel Addin which sounds complicated, but I managed it. I really felt that I had achieved something when I produced my XLA file and it worked like any other addin! It even set its own menu item up in the Excel menu.

The author hits the nail on the head in the introduction when he mentions learning by example and experimentation. You can read a book on a topic, but you will not learn it unless you put it into action, and this book gives plenty of opportunity to do that.