Customer Reviews

Master Visually Excel 2003 VBA Programming

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

 

 

I work in a corporate environment and have found this book to be invaluable -- even in the short two week's I've owned it. Hardly a day goes by when I don't need to find a little VBA technique to help me create useful Excel apps for our team, and this book thus far has not let me down. It's accessible, targeted and concise. Highly recommended.

If there is one thing I know about trying to learn any computer program, it is that you have to get over the fear of the unknown and try it out to see how it works. This book gives you the exact keystrokes to use and pictures of what you should get step by step.

I've tried almost all of the routines and found very few errors. After going through this book you will be familiar with the syntax of VBA, how it is structured and see how it manipulates your spreadsheets in very practical ways that you can use today. You will find yourself keeping these small routines and copying them around in your larger more complex routines.

My only complaint is that sometimes it is hard to read the difference between a period and a comma. As you grow to learn VBA, this complaint lessens however. This is a minor complaint, and certainly not enough to recommend this book less.


I also own VBA Power Programming by Walkenbach, that book, will come ALIVE after you try all the procedures in THIS book.

This book takes you from recording macros to knowing what the Visual Basic editor is, which is the foundation of writing your own macors. The book explores all the basics that you need to grasp along with providing all the steps visually. There are pictures on each page. It shows how to reference workbooks, sheets, ranges, colunms and row statements along with how to make decisions using If Then Else and how to use Loops. Additional topics are charts, pivot tables and user forms. Check out the table of contents for a more information on topics covered.

The reason I gave it only 4 stars instead of 5 is that nowhere in the title or elsewhere does it state its a beginner book. With a title VBA Programming I expected indepth coverage of programming with the excel objects. I was looking more for a intermediate or advanced book.

I've always been a fan of the Master Visually series by Wiley Publishers. I have seen many technical books attempt to use a Visual Graphis style to make complex ideas simple and easy to understand. In this edition of "Excel 2003 VBA Programming" authored by Julia Kelly I wasn't disappointed. I give this book such a high rating because it does exactly what it promises in terms of functionality and understanding.

There's a bit of the cookbook style to the Layout. In the Table of Contents Macro's are grouped by subject from simple to more complex. Of course it doesn't end there. The same technique is used to explore the Visual Basic Editor, Manipulating Worksheets and Workbooks, Working with Ranges, Looping and Branching, Charts and Pivot Tables. In higher order references the book gets into controlling Macros with Events and Form based Programmed Controls. The book also provides an orderly approach to teaching VBA programming and debugging with VBA IDE Interface which I find highly lucid.

The book seems determined on achieving maximum functionality and usefulness to its programmer's audience.

Please note that the fact that this book is written for Microsoft Office 2003 doesn't take away from its value when say compared to a Microsoft Office 2007 environment. Because of the inherent underlying Document Object Model used in Office products most of the functionality still applies.

Overall I would say this book has pretty much everything a new or experienced VBA Macro programmer needs to get busy and productive in a hurry. By the way, one of the nicer things about this book is its use of the sidebar on many of its examples. These sidebars attempt to offer shortcuts and address users issues in Question and Answer format.

In Short this is a book I would pleased to have in my reference library.

This is a perfect book for both beginning and intermediate users of VBA. I have about 15 VBA books(I've been trying to teach myself)and this is one of the top three. Tons of examples that are very easy to understand and copy. Not really a great teaching book as it doesn't go into the building the language code, but the examples are great and a beginner will pick up a lot of tricks. My only criticism is that the book wasn't big enough. I would love to see another book by this author with more of the same.

I would consider myself an intermediate VBA user, reading a few books and developing a few applications. I didn't feel like I started to get anything out of this book until about 250 pages in, which is more than halfway through.

If you are an intermediate user I recommend Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA by Walkenbach, or Excel 2003 VBA Programming with XML and ASP by Julitta Korol.

If you are a beginner then this book or the Dummies book by Walkenbach is a good place to start. This book feels more like a reference book, since they only focus on quick snippets of information at any one time. Two pages are dedicated to each topic. Here are some sample topics: Execute a task with a do while loop, ask a question with a message box, synchronize two charts, add a series trendline, declare a constant, etc.

For $15 this is a good buy just for reference, and maybe $20, but $25 seems a little steep considering the level of depth that goes into each topic. It just feels lacking as a whole, but the short concise approach may be good for an absolute beginner.

The pictures really do show you how rather than tell you. Your are walked through two-page lessons thru the whole book. This is not an intermediate to advanced level reference book. This is great book for the beginner VBA user.

Personnaly, i found learning new things easy, if the book is in color design. Before purchasing i look inside the book and other than the material, i liked it since it is in color. However, when i got the book, got suprised since it is in black and white.

Have been looking around for this book in stores but could not find it anywhere. The response to my queries was quite fast too. Thanks!

This is the worst self help book I have read in about a decade.
Some key observations:

1. The examples were selected to present well with the title with the word "visually".
2. Most of example macros are beneath beginner. The same macros can be created just as efficiently in a macro recorder.
3. Only the Userform Chapter has useful content.