Customer Reviews

Microsoft EXCEL 97/ Visual Basic Step-by-Step Book & Disk

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Though I am new to Excel and VB, I have several years of experience in spreadsheet automation with another spreadsheet product and macro language. This book certainly provides a wealth of information but it is my opinion that the text is difficult to follow by those inexperienced in visual basic. As a VB beginner, I wouldn't recommend this book unless you have a lot of time to dedicate to your learning experience. Lessons 1 and 2 started off on the right track and were easy to understand. Unfortunately, I felt that the lessons that followed jumped into VB too fast and furious. Explanations such as "If you assign a range object to a variable, you can use that variable as an object to the range property" were common and did not provide me with a clear understanding of the issue. Good book for experienced and/or advanced users. In my opinion, beginners should stay away and opt for a more introductory text. Thank you.

This book is a good INTRODUCTION to visual basic programming. If you have never used VB at all, this is a good book to expose you to what VB has to offer. But once you finish reading it, you will definitely feel the need to buy a REFERENCE book for VB.

This book was exactly what I needed: a good introduction to Visual Basic and how to use it in Excel 97. It assumes no prior VB experience, but it helps to have some programming experience to understand the vocabulary and concepts used. You will never be able to use Excel 97 to its full potential without knowledge of VB, trust me. I am continously amazed at the flexibility and power of Microsoft Office. This book allows Excel users to unlock this power. It should be noted that this book is not made as a reference, but as something to read from front to back.

I started with a fairly good understanding of Excel and some elementary Visual Basic. My goal was to understand how macros work in Excel and I was definitely able to achieve that with this book. The book is set up as a series of lessons that take you "step by step" through various projects. The directions are very clear and the screen shots are helpful. In terms of general knowledge gain, I would rate the book highly. However, as a reference manual I was frustrated at my inability to "relocate" interesting passages/ideas in the book. Tidbits of information are scattered throughout the lessons and finding something specific again after your initial go-thru can be very difficult. Subsequently, I would recommend borrowing this book from the library or a friend and then buying a proper reference manual afterwards.

This book can teach anyone to program in visual basic!

To get the most from this book you have to work through it methodically, doing all the exercises. If you have SOME experience of Excel macros, then you will be very tempted to skip the early chapters. Dont!! There are lots of very useful tips hidden in the text.

The book goes to a fairly advanced level, but does tend to rush through the advanced topics.

As a reference book its not very good, as it is near impossible to find what you are looking for. Many times I have half remembered something and not been able to find it again.

But as a teaching aid it is second to none. I am regularly asked to write simple macros for other people. These days I just give them this book and tell them to spend a couple of afternoons working through it!

Most books aiming to teach programming techniques are awful. This book is an exception. Its strength is that you can learn a lot, and there's nothing left unexplained that can confuse the reader. The only disadvantage of presenting everything in examples is that the book probably suffers as a reference (though I haven't gotten to that stage yet). Also, it's a little on the rudimentary side by my standards. Overall, though, a very pleasant surprise; a software text that explains everything and does nothing to confuse the reader.

If you are an expirenced user of VB or VBA this book probably won't help you much as I found out, but my wife whom doesn't have as much expirence found it to be really helpful. There are good lessons and the information seems to be all correct unlike some books I have had that have code that is wrong. If you are an expirenced user then I'd have to reccomend that you look for a better book.

This is an excellent self-study guide for learning VBA for Excel 97! I am a long-time Lotus 1-2-3 user and am very proficient with Lotus Macros. Our company is making the switch to Excel 97, and since my job is to develop spreadsheet applications for our company, I needed to learn how to write detailed macros and create user friendly forms and customize menus in Excel 97. I have been to two classes taught locally for VBA Excel, however, they used version 7.0, and didn't offer it in version 97. The User Forms and Customized Menus differ from version 7.0 to version 97 and the instructors at the classes I attended could not show me the differences because they only used 7.0 ... so I found this book and decided to buy it. I got excited during Lesson 1 because I picked up a few new pointers! By the time I got to lesson 3, I was singing the praises of this book! In EVERY lesson, I was learning new things! This book is well written and easy to read, however, it also takes you into some detailed and intense topics that can take a while to digest. This book starts out with teaching you how to record a simple macro and walks you through and explains the Visual Basic commands the macro created. It then gets into more complex macro tasks including Excel's Object Library, Range Objects, Graphical Objects, Pivot Tables, Custom Menus and Custom Forms. This book comes with a CD that contains interactive lessons. There are twelve lessons in the book and you can go at your own pace. I would especially recommend this book to anyone who is a Lotus 1-2-3 Macro Guru and needs to learn how to create custom applications in Excel 97.

This is a hand-holding book that teaches by example without explaining sufficiently the nuts and bolts of the VBA language. I was not able to make much use of it. In addition, it does not comprehensively cover VBA for Excel. I can appreciate that some readers might prefer the approach taken by this book however.

If you're in a hurry to throw together some Excel VBA, this book will get you started. They hold your hand at every step, and even give you a time estimate at the beginning of every excercise. Talk about helping you plan your studies!

Its strength lies in its step-by-step approach (as the name rightly implies); its weakness lies in the very same quality. As a serious programmer, I didn't gain much insight from it, since it is long on example and short on theory, but it did bring quite a few of Excel's less-known features to my attention that I now use regularly.

For a deeper "I'm already a programmer and know what I'm looking for" kind of source, try "Excel 2000 VBA Programmers Reference by John Green, et al" (ISBN: 1861002548) for that, and you'll be well-satisfied with the combination.

That much aside, its treatment of pivot tables is truly superb, and the VBA project code is provided on the CD at every step. So as a get-you-started guide, it's well worth both the time and the money.