Professional Excel Development: The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications Using Microsoft Excel, VBA, and .NET (2nd Edition) [Paperback]

Rob Bovey (Author), Dennis Wallentin (Author), Stephen Bullen (Author), John Green (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0321508793 | ISBN-13: 978-0321508799 | Edition: 2nd

“As Excel applications become more complex and the Windows development platform more powerful, Excel developers need books like this to help them evolve their solutions to the next level of sophistication. Professional Excel Development is a book for developers who want to build powerful, state-of-the-art Excel applications using the latest Microsoft technologies.”

–Gabhan Berry, Program Manager, Excel Programmability, Microsoft

 

“The first edition of Professional Excel Development is my most-consulted and most-recommended book on Office development. The second edition expands both the depth and range. It shines because it takes every issue one step further than you expect. The book relies on the authors’ current, real-world experience to cover not only how a feature works, but also the practical implications of using it in professional work.”

–Shauna Kelly, Director, Thendara Green

 

“This book illustrates techniques that will result in well-designed, robust, and maintainable Excel-based applications. The authors’ advice comes from decades of solid experience of designing and building applications. The practicality of the methods is well illustrated by the example timesheet application that is developed step-by-step through the book. Every serious Excel developer should read this and learn from it. I did.”

– Bill Manville, Application Developer, Bill Manville Associates

 

The Start-to-Finish Guide to Building State-of-the-Art Solutions with Excel 2007

 

In this book, four world-class Microsoft® Excel developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors—three of whom have been honored by Microsoft as Excel Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)—show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel’s most powerful new features. Using their techniques,you can reduce development costs, time to market, and hassle—and build more effective, successful solutions.

 

Fully updated for Excel 2007, this book starts where other books on Excel programming leave off. Through a hands-on case study project, you’ll discover best practices for planning, architecting, and building Excel applications that are robust, secure, easy to maintain, and highly usable. If you’re a working developer, no other book on Excel programming offers you this much depth, insight, or value.

 

•    Design worksheets that will be more useful and reliable

•    Leverage built-in and application-specific add-ins

•    Construct applications that behave like independent Windows programs

•    Make the most of the new Ribbon user interface

•    Create cross-version applications that work with legacy versions of Excel

•    Utilize XML within Excel applications

•    Understand and use Windows API calls

•    Master VBA error handling, debugging, and performance optimization

•    Develop applications based on data stored in Access, SQL Server, and other databases

•    Build powerful visualization solutions with Excel charting engine

•    Learn how to work with VB.NET and leverage its IDE

•    Automate Microsoft Excel with VB.NET

•    Create managed COM add-ins for Microsoft Excel with VB.NET

•    Develop Excel solutions with Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)

•    Integrate Excel with Web Services

•    Deploy applications more securely and efficiently

Editorial Reviews

Review

“As Excel applications become more complex and the Windows development platform more powerful, Excel developers need books like this to help them evolve their solutions to the next level of sophistication. Professional Excel Development is a book for developers who want to build powerful, state-of-the-art Excel applications using the latest Microsoft technologies.”

—Gabhan Berry, Program Manager, Excel Programmability, Microsoft

“The first edition of Professional Excel Development is my most-consulted and most-recommended book on Office development. The second edition expands both the depth and range. It shines because it takes every issue one step further than you expect. The book relies on the authors’ current, real-world experience to cover not only how a feature works, but also the practical implications of using it in professional work.”

—Shauna Kelly, Director, Thendara Green

“This book illustrates techniques that will result in well-designed, robust, and maintainable Excel-based applications. The authors’ advice comes from decades of solid experience of designing and building applications. The practicality of the methods is well illustrated by the example timesheet application that is developed step-by-step through the book. Every serious Excel developer should read this and learn from it. I did.”

—Bill Manville, Application Developer, Bill Manville Associates

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Back Cover

Finally, there's a book that treats Excel as the powerful development platform it really is, and covers every facet of developing commercial-quality Excel applications.

This is not a book for beginners. Writing for professional developers and true Excel experts, the authors share insider's knowledge they've acquired building Excel applications for many of the world's largest companies—including Microsoft. Professional Excel Development demonstrates how to get the utmost from Excel, addressing everything from application architectures through worksheet and userform design, charting, debugging, error handling and optimizing performance. Along the way, the authors offer best practices for every type of Excel development, from building add-ins through interacting with XML Web services. Coverage includes

• Building add-ins to provide new Excel functions

• Designing effective worksheets, userforms and other user interface elements

• Leveraging Excel's powerful data analysis features

• Creating sophisticated custom charts

• Handling errors, debugging applications and optimizing performance

• Using class modules and interfaces to create custom objects

• Understanding Windows API calls: when to use them, and how to modify them

• Adding worksheet functions with

• C-based XLLs

• Programming with databases

• Controlling external applications from Excel

• Integrating with Visual Basic 6, VB.NET and Visual Studio Tools for Office

• Using XML to import and export data and communicate with Web services

• Providing help, securing, packaging and distributing

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1176 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 2nd edition (May 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321508793
• ISBN-13: 978-0321508799
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2.4 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > VBA
  • #41 in Books > Computers & Technology > Home Computing & How-to > Microsoft How-to > Excel

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate Power-User Book March 25, 2010

By Michael T. Ellis

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Every once in a while a technical book comes along which strikes the perfect balance between "technical detail", "practical application", and "vision". I am, like many people who buy self-help style technical books (as opposed to full out college textbooks), a self declared power-user. Power users are folks who need to get stuff down; not much time for parsing minute details and theoretical concepts. We look for ways to make our day-to-day business tasks more automated. If you're self employed like me, you're very business existence depends on automation.

This book is special for 3 reasons:

1) Practicality of advanced topics:
As a power-user, when was the last time you found yourself seriously looking at c programming, ADO, and SQL? The authors give us real life uses for these sorts of things, in a very focused manner. You walk away with an excellent understanding of why and when to use these things (notice I didn't say thorough understanding. The authors wisely admit that's someone else job, and point you in the right direction), based on what you're trying to accomplish.

2) Relevance of good programming practices:
Most books on programming teach "good programming practice" as if you are going to be working in an enterprise environment, with a team of engineers and professors. That's fine but in reality power-users work under deadlines and completely alone. No one cares how well you comment your code. As long as the thing works, when you want it too, then you've programmed enough. The authors explain a concept called "Interfacing" in a way that makes "good programming" a very practical time investment. I know "Interfacing" is not a new concept (as none of the topics in this book are). Its all in how the authors connect the dots.... The relationship of concepts is far more important than the concept itself.

3) You want to know more:
Usually that's a bad thing, but not in this case because you know why. 90% of technical authors write some form of a dictionary, sprinkled with examples. But the end goal of a program is automation (or at least it should be), whether its iTunes or VBA. Take a repetitious task and automate it. Power-users don't have the luxury of slogging through a dictionary. If I spend time learning an advanced technical topic, there must be clear, reasonably obtainable objectives. The authors accomplish this by a lot. This is a tech book that really sheds light on the usefulness of all those seemingly unuseful-to-you type topics that have spawned so many 1300 page books.

If you've hung with me this far, you might have noticed I don't talk about Excel. That's because this book really isn't about Excel. Excel acts mostly as a cloths-line, linking various topics, methods, and recommendations. The authors tell us at the beginning, Excel is an excellent platform for fast application development and prototyping. THAT's really what the book is about.

It's too bad books aren't written this way more often. Hope this review was helpful Read more ›

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not "Fully updated for Excel 2007" March 20, 2011

By Greg J. Lovern

Format:Paperback

The back of this book says that it is "Fully updated for Excel 2007". However, I have been disappointed to find that's not true.

First, the section on Excel "dictator" apps does not go into the requirements for Excel 2007, except to mention that you'll need to look at the chapter on the ribbon. But that isn't why I'm writing this review.

I wanted to position a form next to a worksheet cell, and on pages 400-402, they say that trying to do that using the cell's Top and Left properties is "extremely difficult", and then say that "Fortunately, there is an easier workaround, which is to use the window that Excel uses for editing embedded charts."

Their workaround code uses Windows APIs. That's no problem, but it's interesting that with a solution apparently available that would probably work on both Windows and Mac (using the cell's Top and Left properties), they show only an easier solution that works only for Windows. No mention of Mac there.

Anyway, I typed in their code, and it didn't work. I carefully checked every character and didn't see any differences. On a hunch, I closed the workbook and opened it in Excel 2003. This time it worked correctly.

I had originally tried it in Excel 2010 (32-bit), and this book was published in 2009, so I tried it in Excel 2007. It still didn't work.

So I started Spy++, hoping that the special window was just renamed in Excel 2007/2010 and/or in a different place in the window hierarchy, which would be easy to work around. No such luck. Using Spy++, I found the special window in Excel 2003, and then looked for it in Excel 2007. The special window they use is not created in Excel 2007 anywhere in the window hierarchy, and in fact no additional window is created at all by those steps....

So this easier solution works only for Excel 2003 for Windows and earlier. The book was published in 2009. Where's the "extremely difficult" solution that works in Excel 2007? You won't find it in this 2009 book, nor any mention of the fact that this "easier" solution does not work in Excel 2007.

I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for the "extremely difficult" solution. Read more ›

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Chapter 3 is worth the entire book for beginning VBA'ers May 19, 2010

By Cindy Kredo

Format:Paperback

I teach Excel and am a VBA developer. I laughed as I read chapter 3, titled "General Application Development Best Practices", because I found myself thinking, wow, if I had read this book 15 years ago I could have saved myself tons of grief! It is one of the BEST summaries of "good vba practices" that I've ever seen. For beginning developers, reading chapter 3 alone is worth the cost of the book. After developing for 15 years, I follow almost all of the practices that were covered in that chapter - and can't agree more with the importance of them. I haven't finished going through this book yet but my enthusiasm for the book wouldn't be diminished even if I hated the rest of it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth it's weight in gold October 22, 2009

By Erwobbie

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the perfect book for those of us who are self-taught VBA developers. This book is especially appropriate for beginning VBA developers. I learned so much from this book that will help me do my job better by writing more solid applications.

I cannot recommend this book enough for anyone who plans on writing Excel applications that need to have a truly professional advantage.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real Time Saver January 3, 2010

By Chris Miller

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I purchased this book when started a project that involved using Excel as the platform for an application. I wanted a reference of best practices as a template for the development. I was able to adapt the PETRAS source code for my project and it saved me weeks of programming. It has convinced me of the viability of Excel for custom applictions and it has advanced my knowledge of class modules, interfaces, events, and encapsulation that will be helpful as I get deeper into applying .NET technologies. The text and examples for the standard use of defined names, generic command bar module, user interface classes, centralized error handling, disconnected recordsets, etc. have addressed most issues that have arisen. I highly recommend this book.