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)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A fast and friendly tutorial to writing macros and spreadsheet applications

• Discover the power of the OpenOffice.org macro language and Calc object model
• Fast, fun, friendly step-by-step OOoBasic tutorial
• Practical and realistic examples to apply to your daily work

In Detail

Adding macros to your spreadsheets enables you to add data processing features to your work, automate repetitive tasks, and even create complete data-driven programs that use the spreadsheet as their back end.

This book teaches the OOoBasic language and the Calc object model, so that you can manipulate spreadsheets and data from within your programs. You will also see how to create dialog boxes and windows for friendly user interfaces, and how to integrate your spreadsheets with other applications, for example writing spreadsheet data to a document, or capturing data from a database, and using the spreadsheet for generating advanced calculations and reports.

Calc is OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet module. Like the rest of OpenOffice.org Calc can be programmed using the built-in language OOoBasic. Both simple macros and complex applications can be developed in this language by controlling Calc through its object model. The book is compatible with the commercial version of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, and the StarBasic language.

What you will learn from this book?

• How to create custom Calc applications
• Creating worksheet functions, automating repetitive tasks, creating new toolbars, menus, and dialog boxes
• A complete guide to the IDE, language, and object model
• Integrating Calc applications with other components of OpenOffice.org
• Internet-based collaborative applications
• How to understand, use and adapt the increasing number of freely available Calc Macros

Approach

A fast, fun, and friendly tutorial. Full of practical, step-by-step examples and clear explanations of all of the important concepts.

Who this book is written for?

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.

About the Author

Dr Mark Alexander Bain

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 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #196,077 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

5 of 5 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 (REAL NAME)

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!

11 of 15 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 (REAL NAME)

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.