Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Programming: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive spreadsheets

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Excel is really Visual Basic with a powerful, though specialised, user interface. Where the latter is a spreadsheet. Of course, if you are an Excel user, you likely think of it primarily as a spreadsheet. But the lessons in this book show that Excel can be very flexible, if you are willing to write simple VB programs.

The lessons are formatted as 2 pages each. Brief. Examples include being able to access the file system, to delete files. But most of the examples naturally pertain to manipulating objects within a spreadsheet. Like changing properties of an object. Or creating it in the first place. The pedagogy also includes generous numbers of screen captures, for easier uptake.

The only drawback is that the author's format (or rather this series' format) of explaining each lesson in 2 pages means that more advanced functionality is not described.

This book is essentially a laundry list of things you can do when programming macros in excel.

If you're trying to write a specific macro and don't know how to make it do something, this book will probably help. You look up a topic (e.g. 'Access the Excel Object Model Reference,'), go to the section, read a couple of paragraphs telling you what the topic is all about, and then go through step-by-step instructions on how to do whatever-it-is (numbered bullets with everything from which ribbons and pull-downs to use, to precise VBA syntax). Each module includes several screen shots with each step indicated by a numbered arrow pointing to the relevant place on one of the shots.

That's all great, and I'm sure that this book will help me when writing macros in the future. What I was looking for however was a book that would teach me to be a better VBA programmer. I wanted to see example code that showed me how to use macros to do new and interesting things. If you just give someone a list of commands and syntax with short descriptions of what they do, they're unlikely to start writing more powerful or elegant code. This book contains no examples to work through or model programs to tinker with. Each topic is a stand-alone module, with, at most, a short snippet of code illustrating the syntax.

If you're looking for an instructional text, this isn't it. If you want a very accessible reference, this is probably a good choice.

This book skips over steps within lessons, and passes over lessons within whole processes. For a beginner, a bad introduction; for an advanced person, a dull primer.

Don't waste your money. There are tutorials all over online for basic and intermediate excel usage. For advanced stuff -- there are way better books that this.

Its very easy and simple book to give you the idea btween your hand.

I like it and I got very good information which I need it.