Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic Programmer's Guide (Microsoft Professional Editions)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this new edition of the Office Programmer's Guide is much better than the 1997 version. Here the authors have provided a nearly end-to-end discussion about how to create custom Microsoft Office solutions. This is not a book for beginners looking for information on the basics. Instead, this is a book created by developers, for developers. The book covers everything you need to know from how to design an Office solutions to how to create it to how to deploy it to users. It covers the new features in each of the Office applications, but also provides a ton of great information on how to work with features that have been around for awhile. Another pleasant surprise was the sample code and sample applications that come with the book. This book is packed with example after example that not only illustrate the concepts discussed, but that look to me like they were designed as re-usable chunks of code that you can cut and paste into your own programs with little or no modification. This has already proved to be a huge timesaver for me.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you are doing any work to customize any of the Office applications or creating your own full-blown Office solutions, having this book is like having your own Office programming expert at your side as you work.

It's very hard to find a book on VBA that isn't based in one application, and doesn't begin at the 'Hello World' level. This book does neither. Instead it provides a good introduction to the object models of the Office applications, and includes well-written code examples. The breadth of content is impressive--from shared Office components to class modules. What a pity it's out of print!

The intro materials in this book reveal that the authors were working side-by-side with the office development team as this book was written. Such direct access to the people who know the most about the product is unusual and it shows in this book. A collection of truly "useful" information and sample code. This is not a rehash of online help or a collection of the "basic" programming info found in a lot of reference books. The discussion generally gives you useful information and, the part I like the most, gives you sample code that works just the way it is in my own programs. This is not sample code of the type "MyControl.Backcolor = Red" that I see so much of. It appears that a real effort was made to write code that not only illustrates a concept, but that is usable in other contexts without much, or any, modification.

Thanks for the resource....check it out - you will not be disappointed.

Note: This book comes with MS Office 2000 Developer Tool

This book really is the first one I've seen that gives you all the info you need to understand and use VBA in Office 2000 and get something done with it. There are literally hundreds of great code samples and clear explanations of what you need to know and, more importantly, why you need to know it. Far superior to most programming books on Office.

I would agree with the review that states the authors were working side-by-side with the office development team as this book was written. However, I would disagree that such close input was entirely helpful. While the information contained in this book is a nice introduction to how things are "supposed" to work, as with so much of Microsoft's software, things never quite work the way they were designed, unless of course, you're doing exactly what the folks at Microsoft assumed you would do. Not only do some examples in this book fail to work, most examples are simple and obvious, the kind of thing a person might generate from looking at Microsoft's help information. Often they illustrate how the designers assumed their software would work. They often fail to demonstrate what the software can do--or much more important--how to get around the artificial limitations set by Microsoft. Some simple examples involve such basic building blocks as dialog boxes and menus (commandbars in Micro-speak). Some built-in dialog boxes have over a dozen arguments, but try finding out what those arguments do from either this book or from Microsoft's help information. As for the commandbars, even the examples from the book fail to work.

My advice? If you want to know what Microsoft intended, get this book. If you want to use Microsoft Office in a real world situation, keep looking.

This is a book designed for people that already know something about office and vba and who want to take custom development to the next level with more advanced techniques

I read this book after reading John Walkenback's Power Programmming with Excel VBA. What a let down. His book was wonderful and motivated me to learn more about VBA. I wish I had chosen a different book. It's slow, badly written (one of the writer still used outdated standards) and just plain boring. If you are looking for a book that will teach you office 2000 vba programming I would suggest you look elsewhere.

I would disagree with many people on this book due to the fact that this book is very helpful on using codes and debugging tools although its a definition guide on computer programming in windows 2000 it can teach you a lot of details on programming it is more like a beginners guide using many symbols and differnt codes this book is more of a book for people wanting to learn how to write files store files also deals with rewritting web pages or possibley a guide on how to develop folders spreadsheets graphs and many othe features i would say this book is really great for anyone wanting to learn c programming in windows environment as well as in the assembly language or DOS enviroment; although this book does not teach you assembly language programming it is a way to start learning assembly language programming1

This book is accurate, nice and comprehensive one to rely on. For Excel programmers I recommend additionally use "Excel 2000 Power Programming with VBA" by John Walkenbach /ISBN 0-7645-3263-4/ and something else for Frontpage/VBA programmers.