Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner (Series)) [Paperback]

Michael Vine (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1592000398 | ISBN-13: 978-1592000395 | Publication Date: December 13, 2002 | Edition: 1

If you are new to programming with Access VBA and are looking for a solid introduction, this is the book for you. Developed by computer science instructors books in the for the absolute beginner series teach the principles of programming through simple game creation. You will acquire the skills that you need for more practical Access VBA programming applications and will learn how these skills can be put to use in real-world scenarios. Best of all, by the time you finish this book you will be able to apply the basic principles you?ve learned to the next programming language you tackle.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Vine has taught computer programming, web design and database classes at Indiana University Purdue University (IUPUI) in Indianapolis, IN and MTI College in Sacramento, CA. Michael has 12 years of professional IT experience with Fortune 500 companies in database development, software engineering, web design and IT project management.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (December 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592000398
• ISBN-13: 978-1592000395
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,066,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not for beginners, intermediate or advanced, November 16, 2005

By 

Lisa M. Malki - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (Paperback)

I am a self-taught Access user. I would rate myself as an intermediate-level developer. I picked up this book at the store on impulse. Even though it described itself as an "absolute beginner" book, I thumbed through it and thought that it might be helpful anyway.

I read through the book in about three days. The first thing that struck me was how poorly the book was written. Difficult to understand in many sections. I can't explain it but I am sure many readers of this book know what I mean.

The second, and more serious problem is that this book is absolutely not for beginners. I don't care how brilliant you think you are, this book will frustrate any absolute beginner. In fact, the book confused me, so I would suggest that it is fairly useless to anyone regardless of your skill level.

I own about 20 Access books (yes, it's getting bad). If you are a beginning Access programmer I can recommend the following excellent books:

Microsoft Access XX Visual Basic by Evan Callahan. That was my very first Access programming book and it will get you started. Easy to understand.

Next, look at Access 2XXX VBA Handbook by Novalis. I warn you that the first 4 or 5 chapters of this book are dry and useless for beginners, and you can skip over them (you will want to, believe me). But the book comes alive and lucid once Novalis gets to teaching VBA starting in chapter 7. Lots of great examples to follow. Lots of good code to learn from. Tons of practical tips and code covering the types of things you will be doing.

Finally, Learn To Program by John Smiley is probably the very best beginning book ever written. Unfortunately it is a book on Visual Basic, a programming language very close to Access VBA. However, since 90% of what's covered in the book applies to Access VBA, and since it's so clearly written for beginning programmers, I believe you will be glad you have it in your library.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not sure what kind of Beginner they mean..., March 9, 2006

By 

Jennifer Rader "jenerator10" (Marysville, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner (Series)) (Paperback)

I'm a SQL database programmer, not an application programmer, so I thought I could pick up Access VBA fairly quickly. Not so much, as it turns out. I started off with Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Access 2003 Development, which didn't give me enough basic grounding to really "get it". I succeeded in using some of the examples to my purposes, but couldn't do any truly innovative adaptions because I really didn't understand what I was doing.

So, time to find a more basic book to give me the grounding I needed. I bought Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner with that purpose in mind, and it has served that purpose admirably. Some of the writing is dense and difficult to follow, but he always follows up with examples that cleared up any confusion I had. I've had a great time working my way through the assignments and end-of-chapter challenges, and am feeling confident that after digesting the book fully, I'll be ready for Allison Balter's book.

So, in a sense, I was an absolute beginner and it has been a very good book for me. But I was an absolute beginner at VBA, not databases or usage modeling. I've been supporting enterprise systems for 15 years, much of which was spent writing reports and complex queries. That experience made the examples far more accessible to me, I'm sure.

I can't imagine how difficult this book would be for the complete computer novice or absolute beginner with zero experience in databases. I recommend a strong working knowledge of Access as an application before attempting programming with this book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For VBA Absolute Beginners not for Access Absolute Beginners, January 23, 2006

By 

J. Guerrero "Electric Residential Service" (Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (Paperback)

Hi, I bought this book, and it actually took a little over a month for me to receive it, since I thought it had been lost.

I was about to reorder when I saw the comments on amazon reviews and thought to myself, "I'm so glad I didn't get it. I won't reorder."

To keep the review to the point, the book is not for people who know nothing of access. You need to be familiar with some programming concepts.

I don't believe the title is misleading. In my opinion one should move to programming once one has an intermediate to advance understanding of access at its macro programming level, at least.

It's a great book. If you are beginning programming for access, buy it, but you won't reap the rewards unless you treat it like a school text book. Take the challenges and do them based on the code written for the sample database in each chapter.

I give it 5 stars, because unlike other books on VBA for beginners, this one has exercises and doesn't just throw out the code for you to figure out in the text and use for your purposes, which is fine, but you got not much to practice on.

The only way you will learn programming, just like math, is by doing it. I strongly recommend it if you already use in your MS Access database at least 30% of the available macros for your operations. It's time to move to VBA programming for greater speed, flexibility and what-not rewards of programming.

NOTE: VB (Visual Basic) is NOT VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). You have to buy books on VBA to program the code module interface in access. Of course more advanced programmers do use C modules and other languages as SQL in the interface. I just want to make clear that VB does not equal VBA.