Customer Reviews

VBA For Dummies

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I found this book nowhere near as helpful as other Dummies books on VBA programming. If you want another good starter book, I would recommend "Access 97 Programming for Dummies", which is full of real world examples that will help you understand VBA.

The author just seemed to get too cute with the subject matter. Also, the lack of real world examples really hurts this book. You can't step into object-oriented programming when you decide to invent your own objects for everything.

The explanation of how loops work is okay and the constants information is not bad. Overall, however, get a real technical book and try to learn it that way. It will be harder, but you will be better for it.

I picked up this book at a local bookstore (sorry Amazon), mainly because it was the only VBA book they had. This book allowed me to learn a lot of the concepts of VBA programming, in connection with Word 97 Annoyances, and VB&VBA Programming in a Nutshell. I recommend it to beginning VB programmers, like I was. It helped me get above the basics, fast. It's easy to discount these Dummies books, and most of them are so "Dummy" that they aren't worth the effort, but this one is a good book.

I learned VBA via Excel, but felt limited by my Excel-centric world and wanted get a broader VBA/VB perspective. By introducing topics like ActiveX controls and text stream objects with a minimum of hard-to-understand terminology, this book helped me reach my goal.

I tried using Access 97 Programming Unleashed to learn VBA. I got more out of the smaller VBA for Dummies book than the 850 page Unleased book. I especially liked the way it broke down the parts the VB Editor. This book doesn't try to do a lot of things like fat books do, but sticks to the main topic, VBA. I liked it because it's small and doesn't break my arm when I read it. On the less positive side it had isolated pieces of code that you can't really use without some expertise and it doesn't cover Access very well.

I had taken a crash course on VB a few years ago and not touched it since. When I went to start using VBA at work, I quickly realized I didn't remember a single thing. I picked this book up and, within a week, had started on my program.

The book's focus, as a For Dummies book, is to get the novice started, not to squeeze functionality out for intermediate users. Sure, the book didn't cover all the topics I needed help on, but it did help me figure out 90% of my code.

At the same time, it does require the reader to do some of their own thinking, but if the reader can't do that, programming isn't really a good idea for them.

As far as other reader suggestions to just buy a VB book, that is disingenuous. A VB primer isn't going to show you how to use VB within Microsoft Applications, which is what nearly half of this book is about.

In short, don't get this book if you know the language already and looking to learn more. But don't expect the book to right your programs for you. But do get the book if you need a place to start and don't mind doing some work for yourself.

I am truly scratching my head trying to understand how this book received so many five star reviews on the Amazon site. Perhaps the author's friends wrote these reviews.
Anyway, let's set the record straight.
"VBA for Dummies" by John Paul Mueller is like taking a really bad computer class. A glance at the description of the author will give you an idea why. Mueller has apparently never taught a computer class.
Basically, the explanations in this book are not very clear and have hardly been simplified to accommodate the novice. The chapter on creating VBA forms is a good example. Nowhere in the chapter is there a single mention of the basic idea that to access and modify a form's code, you have to double-click on the form itself within the IDE (upon which the code window pops up). Also, it is not explained very clearly that each time you add a form to a spreadsheet or document you must essentially create two sets of VBA code, i.e. one for the form and one in a module that connects the form to the spreadsheet or document and is necessary to display the form.
The chapter on object-oriented programming, debatably the most crucial, is completely useless to anyone who has never before dealt with concepts like objects, classes, properties, and methods. In fact, the author does not even give an explanation of exactly what object-oriented programming is in the first place. While the examples of code in the chapter are very clever, they do not give an idea about how objects, classes, properties, or methods are really used.
The author prefaces the book by saying that "VBA for Dummies" assumes only that you have a solid understanding of Microsoft Windows and at least one Microsoft Office program. In fact, if you have no programming experience (with either VB or any another language), it will be very difficult with this book alone to learn VBA well enough to even write a simple macro without error. The book should be retitled perhaps "VBA for Definitely Not Total Dummies."

I've used other "For Dummies" books, and expected more. I was disappointed. The book seemed intent on touting the individual capabilities of the interface and components without building the reader's SKILL in using them. Part of the problem is in the scope, how you use VBA is somewhat application-specific, so trying to teach it from a multi-application reference is a losing battle. The author even admits that many of the examples won't work if typed in as-is. The biggest shortcoming is in VBA/Parent Application information linking. If you want ideas on what VBA is capable of, go ahead and buy this, but if you're trying to develop a program for a specific application, buy an application-specific book by another publisher instead/also.

"Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to misery."

- Yoda

True, true. But misery can be traced back to sources other than fear. Frustration, for example.

I could say it's my failure to understand and take blame for my current state of misery, but for the fact that Mueller wrote a book "for dummies," and thus utterly failed in his mission.

I encountered the same kind of frustration, anger, hate, and misery when I was taking a course in C++ in Berkeley. Why is programming so hard to teach well? Is it because those who are good enough at programming to teach it get to be that good due to some sort of personality defect, a failure of empathy? Are they just incapable of understanding what it's like to approach this material without the intuitive grasp they seem to have?

In reading "VBA for Dummies," I feel at times as though I'm trying to make eye contact with someone who's staring at the ground muttering arcana to himself.

Well, maybe I'm overstating my case a bit, but I do get a sense that this guy is regurgitating what he already knows, satisfied that it makes sense to him.

You know what it really reminds me of? When my mom tried to teach me how to play piano as a kid. I was about four or five, and I was super-psyched. I wanted to play songs right away. My mom would not let me. She said we had to go through the lessons in the book, in the order presented. She had me do insufferably boring "Do Re, Do Re, Do Re" lines, because it taught the fundamentals or whatever. I'm sure the "Do Re, Do Re, Do Re" drills made sense to her, and fit in the context of how she understood music, but to me, it just killed all the joy and enthusiasm I had for learning to play the piano.

They say if you want to learn something well, approach the material as though you're going to teach it to someone else. My approach to this would have been to pick functional, demonstrative programs--songs in VBA if you will--that reward the student for his efforts with the "I made this," gee-whiz factor. With each successive lesson, the programs would include progressively complex topics and do more. The student's interest and enthusiasm will fill in the gaps in the dry stuff between lessons.

Mueller's demonstrations are programs that serve no real purpose. Most just spit out message boxes of objects' properties, and have no real context in the experience of a user of Office. "VBA for Dummies" is page after page of "Do Re, Do Re, Do Re."

Normally, I don't go out of my way to criticize a book, but this one warranted it. Do not buy this book. It is obvious that the author knows VBA, but he has a difficult time teaching it. The book fails on engaging the reader and providing real world examples. Rather, the author simply disseminates definitions of concepts, and allows little room for context. I truly do not understand how this one made it to press. I am confounded. His belletristic language, coupled with various errors point to someone in a hurry to meet a deadline and indulge himself rather than truly guide the reader. The book is peppered with poor and erroneous examples. I made a list of them and just threw it away, as it was becoming a waste of time. I have read many programming books in my day, and this is, by far, the worst. Do yourself a favor and find another book...I would say ANY VBA tutorial would be a better option. Try Diane Zak's book under Course Technology. What a difference. One is the right way to teach and the other is the right way to confuse. The only people I would advise to buy this are other authors of programming books, as it would help enlarge their self-esteem.

The author does a great job of getting you started and then helping you do something useful. I had used both Word and Excel extensively before I started reading this book, so I was already familiar with application usage. Unlike some books that would have assumed I didn't know anything about the application just because I've never written code, this one got me going with code right away. It wasn't long before I was writing some really helpful macros for both Word and Excel.

The author demonstrates that it's possible to do a lot more than you think you can do with either Word or Excel, but encourages you to use the right application for the job. I found the chapter on working with multiple applications the most useful because the examples are so practical and perform so well. This is a great book for someone who has never coded in VBA before and really wants to do something practical fast.