Customer Reviews

Excel Programming Weekend Crash Course

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

 

 

I bought this book based on the reviews and summary because it sounds like a book that a beginner could really learn from. But not so. I've made it to chapter four but I'm finding I can go on no longer. This book is basically straight text. There are no step by step lessons to demonstrate what the lesson is talking about. The book does provide some sample code, but it is presented as an example; you do not build it yourself. This book tells you what to do, but you don't get your hands dirty by actually writing codes yourself and then seeing what the code does.

I will say this though. The text itself is well written and is readable enough, given the dry nature of the subject. But I do feel this is more of a reference book for beginners. I'm going to buy the Microsoft step-by-step book, then come back to this book.

I'm giving it two stars simply because I do not believe this book is what it claims to be, a weekend crash course.

I thought that the material was thought through and presented well. It fell short, in my opinion, because there weren't enough examples or any exercises to demonstrate how to apply the programming techniques to different situations within Excel.

A workbook would be a great addition to this text.

I recently picked this book up after I tasked myself with developing a quoting system for my company. I've had some exposure to VBA before, but only small segments such as a message or input box, simple forms, etc.

Immediately after sitting down with this book I was impressed. Mr. Aitken writes in a clear, concise, and very logical manner that I found easy to follow. Topics are presented well and for the most part given adequate treatment. Some may say the book is too basic, but it's not meant to be an advanced programming course.

In a little over three days, I was able to completely program a sales quoting system using multiple screens, worksheet linking, and simple database tables. Now, instead of hand-writing and calculating associated costs (which often leads to errors) the user is systematically prompted for key inputs and all calculations are done in the background. I've reduced administrative time required to complete a quote by over 25%.

Not bad for a weekend project!

I was an absolute novice to vba when i got the book. It's good with the basics, but after a while you will definitely need a book to complement this one.

Really is the one of the best books for beginners. It is very comprensive book for introduce you in the world of excel programming.

It took exactly a weekend for me to digest this book. The author's writing style is clear and the book was clearly well designed. You should write this from cover to cover and you'll get exactly what's you are promised to get: a course on Excel macro and excel programming.

Good value for money.

Peter Aitken has written many Microsoft books that I have read over the years so I was more interested in this book because Peter wrote it and it does cover the new Excel 2003 release as well as previous versions of Excel to make it appropriate for someone (like me) who is still working on Excel 2000! I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a quick tutorial guide to using the basics and not-so-basics of Excel. Peter writes in an easy to understand style that makes it enjoyable.

Nice book if you need a crash course. Format was easy to understand, and code examples that work to give a better handle on your project.

An interesting thing about Microsoft Excel is diversity; of its users, their expertise, and the different ways they use Microsoft Excel. This diversity makes it difficult for one book to be an effective introductory text for everyone.

Excel Programming Weekend Crash Course provides a good introduction to programming in Visual Basic for Applications, and to the Excel object model. The author imparts a reasonable foundation, enough for one to knowledgeably research the Internet (or more advanced books) to find, copy and tailor code for one's use; and to learn about parts of Excel object model and programming best practices not discussed in this book.

As this book does not contain any programming projects to reinforce learned concepts, it is probably best geared towards readers who already have a project that they want to automate using VBA. For my first project, I was able (with the help of external research) to reduce the time it took to create a daily report from slightly over one hour to mere minutes.

This book is extreemly frustrating as it tells you what excel can do, gives brief formulas but then does not show you how to use them in detail so it can be difficult in trying to acheive the result with the given formulas.