Customer Reviews

From VBA to VSTO: Is Excel's New Engine Right for You?

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

 

 

I haven't quite finished reading the book, but I am close to the end. The book is really a guided tour for migrating to using VSTO in Visual Studio to program for Excel in VB.Net, as a successor to VBA. The book is not intended to teach VB.Net or Visual Studio, but just to hilight the migration path for Excel VBA programmers to move to VSTO in Visual Studio using VB.Net. The book assumes a knowledge of Excel VBA, as well as VB.Net, that is beyond my background, which is limited to mathematical programming for mechanical engineering, so a fair portion of what the author presented was not entirely intelligible to me (particularly the database programming). I understood what he was trying to do in his coding examples, but the syntax was not dissected in a manner that a true teaching textbook would have done. However, I knew this going in, and it served my purpose, by quickly targeting the topics I will need to learn in order to upgrade my Excel VBA programming skills to VSTO. I am in the process of beginning to learn VB.Net from other books, and I now know what to focus on. Hopefully, the authors of beginning-intermediate Excel VBA programming books will soon update their books to VSTO for VB.Net, which will provide a more accessible upgrade path for Excel VBA mechanical engineering programmers. I think that Microsoft is the holdup here, because they haven't committed to providing VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications) built in to Microsoft Office, like they provide VBA built-in, and until they do, VSTO and VB.Net will not become the mass-market alternative to Excel VBA, that will attract authors to revise their Excel VBA training books to VSTO for VB.Net.

The book does a great job at helping an accountant make the transition between VBA and VSTO, which is not an easy thing. It is written a good level, you don't have to be a PROGRAMMER to understand it.
If your company is thinking about making the transition to the newer version of Microsoft Office, this will eliminate VBA, so you need this book.

If you are considering the move from VBA to VSTO, then you will want to have this book.

Amazon's shipper got it to me without delay.

Didn't rate this at all.
Shame because I had high hopes. There are better books than this one.
I actually use it as a mat for my cups of tea whilst reading others - I'm not joking!
I think the previous reviewers 5* rating given to this book was a member of the family.