Customer Reviews

Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart for Administrators, Developers, and Power Users

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

An excellent high and low level view of programming Outlook 2000/XP. For an experienced programmer, the majority of the chapters get right into the code/objects/events/models you'll need. The code examples are not "toys", but (fortunately) are brief enough to focus on the subject being discussed.
Novice and experienced programmers will appreciate the overview of the VBA environment/language within Outlook.
Reading this book answered specific questions I needed answered about customization, and erased that "where do I start" feeling I had about programming in Outlook. Great book!

The book is beyond excellent, but that is not why I am writing this review. Sue Mosher put a book together for all levels of Outlook users. From the novice trying to extend the usefulness of Outlook to the programmer tasked with creating a custom solution. Between this book (and her others), her work with www.slipstick.com, and her own www.outlookcode.com--she is the greatest Outlook\Exchange coding resource I could name. What makes it even better is that when you happen to email her a 'code dilemma' question she'll write you back and set you straight.

I am a little more than a novice with VBA, but with Sue's details and explaination of the complex syntax required by Outlook, real progress was possible. I have been able to build an Outlook form with VB Script that collects data form a large number of people within my company and store it on a public foler for futher use and reference. It only took a few weeks to do that and it would not have been possible without this book. Highly recommended.

If you've been writing in VB and VBA for awhile then this book is a large waste of money. The first half of the book covers basic VB programming concepts like For Next, Do While, Select Case, Msg Box etc.... stuff I've been doing for years. The rest of the book has some okay examples, but it's not organized in a way that allows you to find what you are looking for easily.

Better than nothing, December 8, 2006
Reviewer: Richard C. H. Freytag (Northern Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Look the book has a good index - I know because I have had to use it a lot because the author REGULARLY USES TERMS BEFORE DEFINING THEM which I hate! In fact terms are not really defined well at all leaving the user wandering like a blind man trying to understand an elephant by touch. Here you learn about one object.method, there another object.method or property but no understanding of the overall hierarchy is given. Sadly this is typical in manuals that attempt to explain a framework of objects, properties, and methods. But my money and time deserve better than this.

Pointing people to the online object browser is not good enough - that gives none of the "why" behind the object hierachy which is the real value behind its design (there is a "why" isn't there Microsoft?). For a good example of how to do this for Outlook take a look at Martin Green's excellent free online Oulook case-study: [...]. Notice how he defines objects - that is the right way to teach.

Also the editing is lacking; here is a typical example from Ch10.3 - 'Among the useful things you can do with CDO are delete an Outlook item permanently, rather than send it to the Deleted Items folder, and open a Select Names dialog, asking the user to choose recipients. You will look at the first task in this chapter and then work with the Select Names dialog in Chapter 14, "Working with Items and Recipients," after you become familiar with recipient concepts. CDO can also expose many more properties of individual items and folders than Outlook can, making it possible to perform tasks that otherwise seem impossible."

1. Note the attention-deficit-inducing use of comma-separated phrases in the first sentence. It is typical, and obfuscatory.

2. That first sentence also just tells you about two things you can do with CDO objects - two of many. Instead give the "why" of the object and then outline the few key methods, then use the method. Its worked for decades for every serious educational and technical text. Leave the stream-of-conciousness form to the auteurs of the liberal arts where they can do no harm.

3. Sentence two in the above quote predicts what you will do; I assure you this is as weird as it reads appearing completely out of the blue. Just a prediction with no preamble, reasoning, or, indeed, information.

4. Sentence three in the above quote says something "seems impossible." What that impossible thing is is never explained nor how or why it seems impossible.

There is a lot of good material hidden in this book between acres of verbiage. At least there is a good index - that is a real plus. And the author is generous online with help which is why I bought the book - got to respect someone that puts in the hours to help others.

I have not given 5 stars because it is not perfect. One complain is that the first part is too easy and is aimed for total beginners and then there is the second part where a lot of material is presented too fast. I wished that the book spent less time with very basic (pun intended) VBA stuff but takes more time to make the transition to more advanced topics smoother.

Other than that, the book contains a lot of code that can easily be reused.

This book is such a blessing to us power users looking for starting or jumping off point into useful programming.

As a former 5 yr sales rep for end user trainng manuals now turned sales engineer, I never had the patience for all those beginning programming books building "birdhouses" and "hello world." Thank you for giving us wannabe programmers a purposeful, immediate and relevant starting point!

I only knew the basics of Excel VBA and needed Outlook VBA to export data into Excel. I found myself reading not only what I needed but almost the entire book because it was easy to understand and I learned new procedures that I didn't know were possible in Outlook.

Thank You Sue Mosher! This book helped me quickly accomplish a lot of what I had been slowly working through or had put on hold. It is well organized and easy to follow. The examples are fantastic. They are a great quick reference.

Good examples for medium VBA level. The first part is for beginners, so someone can be disappointed , but going on I found a lot of things I didn't know. Lots of images. Maybe I prefered a CD with a little more code. I notice I can't give 5 stars because I've had some problems with English language, that's not my language, so I can't say it's a simple book, but it's my fault.