VBA Programming for Microsoft Office Project Versions 98 through 2007 (Epm Learning) [Paperback]

Rod Gill (Author), Gary L Chefetz and Dale A. Howard (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Epm Learning | Publication Date: October 25, 2006

Rod Gill's VBA Programming for Microsoft Office Project, Versions 98 through 2007 is the first book devoted to Microsoft Project VBA. Rod Gill helps you get the most from the worlds most popular Project Management tool by showing you ways to automate away the drudgeries of schedule manipulation, how to vastly enhance your reporting capabilities, and how to integrate with other Microsoft Office applications like Access and Excel. VBA Programming for Microsoft Office Project is packed with carefully commented code samples described through a one-step-at-a-time learning approach, each successively building toward more useful and complex application code. With 14 fully functional macros plus many samples of useful code snippets available for download from the official book site, you can start realizing efficiency gains on your very first day using this long-awaited resource. The books editors include Microsoft Project MVPs Gary L. Chefetz and Dale A. Howard, the authoring team who produced the only book on Project Server 2002, and seven titles covering Project and Project Server 2003 including the benchmark standards: Administering an Enterprise PMO using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and Managing Enterprise Projects using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rod Gill, founder of New Zealand based ACE Project System Ltd., has been involved with project management his entire career and with the advanced use of Microsoft Project since its first release. Along with project management training, consulting, and Project Server implementations, Rod has a regular sideline in VBA development, mostly for Microsoft Project. Rod was drawn to VBA development and the challenge of integrating Microsoft Project with other systems after 8 years of software engineering. Rod is a long-time Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional (MVP), first winning this prestigious technical award in 1998 for his contributions to the Microsoft communities. Rod s passion for Microsoft Project and Project VBA and for helping others has kept him in the forefront of using Microsoft Project.

Product Details

• Paperback: 476 pages
• Publisher: MSProjectExperts; 1 edition (October 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0975982877
• ISBN-13: 978-0975982877
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,097,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buy it, even though the coverage of Project is rather thin, August 28, 2010

By 

Marty - See all my reviews

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This review is from: VBA Programming for Microsoft Office Project Versions 98 through 2007 (Epm Learning) (Paperback)

This review is going to be somewhat unfair, since it assumes that you've read the rave reviews elsewhere on this site an already know the book's strengths. If you're new to MS Project programming you'll want the book, but you might want to buy it knowing about the following (perceived) weaknesses.

1. The author addresses the use of Visual Basic For Applications in Microsoft Project. This forces him to divide his attention between how to program with VBA and how to use VBA to add features to Project. This problem of divided attention is common to all VBA texts, be it VBA for Excel, for Access, for Word, for Outlook or for PowerPoint. In other books the authors write rather substantial introductions to VBA. In Guy Hart-Davis's magisterial Word 2000 Developer's Handbook (Handbook) the first 500 pages is devoted to a dense and extremely useful discussion of VBA, with 60 pages on custom dialog boxes (forms), 30 pages on controlling program loops and 50 pages on the use of variables, constants and arrays. Only after that introduction does Guy bring in Word-specific programming. In contrast, VBA Programming For Microsoft Office Project (VPFMOP) offers much less detail. There are only three pages that address forms. It is highly unlikely that a beginner is going to be able to do much with that introduction. (Although Listbox controls are used in the code, you won't learn why the frustrating ColumnHeads property is not useful in MS Project). Similarly, there is only six pages on conditional and looped statements. The discussion is clear, but it doesn't get very far into the nitty-gritty. You probably want to understand VBA fairly well before starting this book.

2. The other half of this equation is getting Project to do the things you want it to do. Beyond "If" statements and "Do" loops, you want to manage Tasks, Resources, Calendars, Assignments, and a host of other, Project-specific features. Project allows you to do this by exposing tools called objects. There are objects for each feature mentioned above and many more (more than 80 are listed on Microsoft's site). Getting a grasp on how the various Project objects interact is a major challenge. In books for other products this covers many hundreds of pages. Again, in contrast, the discussion in VPFMOP on Project objects is very thin. The index points to just five objects, each presented in just a few pages. The author repeatedly encourages the reader to use the macro-recorder to look into details, but I had hoped that the book would be much deeper. For example, a common operation is that of assigning resources to a task. How do you do that? As far as I can tell, the book is silent.

3. Others at Amazon have expressed strong support for the style of presentation in VPFMOP, but not everyone is going to be happy with it. Much of the book revolves around programming a new feature called "Project Control Center" (PCC). In a typical presentation, the author briefly discusses some aspect of MS Project, the necessary programming is outlined, and then the new code is added to the PCC. This is an excellent technique for dealing with students in a classroom, but frustrating for programmers who need guidance on a particular technical issue. It can be hard to dig specific technical details about Project out of the application details for the PCC. In short, it's hard to browse this text.

4. A very large fraction of this book revolves around using VBA to control programs other than Project. Surely this is an overly ambitious aim for a book that doesn't have more than a page or two to spare for discussing VBA forms. In fairness, I suspect that Rod is telling us that the overwhelming majority of programming tasks for Project involve creating reports, where the ability to manage Excel or Access is important. But there are libraries of Excel and Access books out there, many of which do a better job of explaining programming in their province. In trying to be all-things-VBA, VPFMOP looses focus on clarifying the many relationships that are painfully under-documented within Project.

5. Minor complaints! The format of this book is a bit peculiar. It looks like a website that was adapted to print format (there are the usual HTML heading levels, block quotes containing code, bullet points and quite large print). VPFMOP appears to be printed on 8.5 X 11 inch paper, as if it came off of an inkjet printer. There is a striking amount of whitespace. You're not getting a lot of text in this 450 page book. Finally, the index is pretty marginal. For example, calendars are an important aspect of Project, and although there is no discussion of the Calendar object (that I could find) this object is used in code(pg. 324). It would be useful if use of individual Project objects in code had been indexed.

Once again, this is the only book out there for programming MS Project. If you intend to program then certainly buy this book. My guess is that people who do not have a VBA background will find themselves periodically frustrated. (Those folks might want to try to find a copy of VBA Developer's Handbook, 2nd Edition to have as a backup). Just be aware that the text your getting is more like a classroom study-guide than a reference book. As with study-guides, you'll probably read it once and then rarely pick it up again. That said, the hardest part is to get going. That's where VPFMOP is a treasure.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Start, May 17, 2007

By 

Ray N. Messinger "Space Camel" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: VBA Programming for Microsoft Office Project Versions 98 through 2007 (Epm Learning) (Paperback)

Didn't learn much new stuff. Most is out on the Web but it is nice to have it in one place. I like the book format, good for older coders like me who's eyes aren't like they used to be.

The index is limited/sparce. Wish it had an appendix with the full MSP Object Model and other MSP specific references.

Great start, just want more...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clarity and most of all Completeness, November 11, 2006

By 

J. De Messemaeker - See all my reviews
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This review is from: VBA Programming for Microsoft Office Project Versions 98 through 2007 (Epm Learning) (Paperback)

The title sais it all, really.
We all know this book is years overdue - there was no book on ythe subject at all - but the waiting wa worth it. It is crystal clear in its explanations and in the examples, but most of all it touches highly important subjects you wouldn't expect: Project 2007, but also links to Access, to the Server DB, and OLEDB.

To me personally this book will serve in two ways:

- It will help me teach Project VBA (I have declined such requests for lack of a good student book)
- It will allow me to develop in areas I have been avoiding (Data Bases and OLEDB)

Thank you Rod, and congratulations.