Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming: OOoBasic and Calc automation: A fast and friendly tutorial to writing macros and spreadsheet applications [Paperback]

Dr Mark Alexander Bain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 2006

Learn how to extend and customize Calc, the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet, using OOoBasic, OOo's built-in programming language. You don't need to be a developer to create useful and powerful routines and applications. This well structured and practical tutorial will walk you though every step, and inspire you with great ways to save time and increase your productivity using Calc. You don't need to be a programmer to use this book, but you do need to be familiar with the concept of a program and how simple things like a loop might work. If all you have is a taster of simple programs from high school then you will be fine.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Mark Alexander Bain first started customizing CRM systems back in the mid '90s when he was team leader for Vodafone's Cascade project - the team took the 'out-of-the-box' Clarify CRM and turned it into a radio base station planning application, complete with a workflow engine for passing jobs between the different departments involved in the planning, building, and implementation of a radio network. Since then he's lectured at the University of Central Lancashire, and currently Mark writes articles on all things Linux and Open Source for Linux Format, Newsforge.com and Linux Journal. SugarCRM customization, therefore, seems the obvious choice for this, his second book, since it combines Mark's knowledge of working with commercial CRMs and the Open Source philosophy. Mark works from his home on the edge of the Lake District in the UK, where he lives with his wife, two dogs and two cats, and gets the odd visit from his sons - Michael and Simon.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (December 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847190979
• ISBN-13: 978-1847190970
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,001,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great overview of macro programming with just enough code, March 24, 2008

By 

C. Wright - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming: OOoBasic and Calc automation: A fast and friendly tutorial to writing macros and spreadsheet applications (Paperback)

I found this book very useful in getting things going with openoffice.org macro programming. I was underwhelmed with the materials I found on the internet, but found all the major topics covered in this book in varying degrees of depth. If you are already familiar with visual basic this book provides enough material to make the jump to openoffice.org basic.

This book is not a 400 page long tutorial of how to make one or two specific programs, like some vba books. This book does provide enough code examples to get the various concepts across.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eclectic mix of knowledge, December 8, 2007

By 

Andrew D. Pitonyak (Columbus, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming: OOoBasic and Calc automation: A fast and friendly tutorial to writing macros and spreadsheet applications (Paperback)

I am was the official reviewer for this book before it was published. I was not paid for this service, nor do I benefit in any way from the sale of this book.

The book starts with a basic introduction to the programming environment, and includes a brief introduction to the structure of the language. The book does not even attempt, however, to provide full coverage of the language. This is not an introduction to programming or Basic. If you know something about programming, however, this should be sufficient to get you started.

The chapter on the object model, discusses how [...] (OOo) structures its internals. More specifically, the use of interfaces and services. There is also a discussion on how to manipulate the sheets and cells, which is what you probably expected when you see Object Model.

I refer to this book as Eclectic, because it contains numerous different topics, some of which you will not likely find elsewhere. For example, the book contains a fully working macro that extracts stock values from a web site to populate a Calc document. The macro even creates a chart over time of the stock.

Another nice offering in this book, is coverage of the FuncationAccess service. This service allows you to call the standard built-in functions such as STDEV from a macro. This is frequently a skipped topic, and you will not find it in the online help pages.

Although I could spend time to provide a chapter by chapter description of everything that is covered, well, that is not my intention. I primarily wanted to mention that I consider myself very well versed in Macro Programming, and I learned a few things by reading this book, and I enjoyed the process!

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not recommended!, February 16, 2007

By 

G. Jenkins (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming: OOoBasic and Calc automation: A fast and friendly tutorial to writing macros and spreadsheet applications (Paperback)

After reading this book I was disappointed. The explanations were not complete and examples are worst. I kept reading the book over and over trying to find out how to simply erase the contents of a range of cells without results. It gives reference sites to visit but they are very difficult to follow. The book seems to assume you understand programming pretty well to begin with. Finally I turned to the internet and found several sites with much better help. I should have saved my money.