Customer Reviews

Word 2000 Developer's Handbook

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this book after doing some serious VBA programming for Excel and having been in and out of software development for many years. It's tough to write a book for all users, novice and experienced. This book falls in between those two extremes.

If you've never done any programming, you'll likely be frustrated by the slow start into actual programming. Some readers will need a "Hello world" routine up front. On the other hand, if you're an experienced programmer, you'll find that 60 to 70 percent of the book is way below your level and needs. But wait a minute, we're talking about a 1200+ page book! If just 10 percent is on target for you and you can find what you need, it's a steal.

The content of the book is far, far, far beyond what Microsoft provides with built-in menus and help. Anyone who claims otherwise simply hasn't done any serious VBA programming. A large percentage of the commands and structures covered here absolutely cannot be generated by automated recording. For example, I wrote a code that scans a document, finds all the acronyms, determines whether the acronym definitions are provided, and builds and/or updates an acronym table at the end. It flags all undefined acronyms and it color-codes duplicate definitions and out-of-order definitions. It includes a toolbar for helping navigate the document. It also includes a capability for combining acronym tables from multiple sources. You have to really get immersed to code a task even as conceptually simple as this one, and this book is what you need to get through it.

The most challenging thing about being productive with VBA is the horrendously large object model. Some of the best programmers I know -- and I'm talking guided-missile engineers and the like - have turned away from VBA because the object model required too much of a learning curve. This book does a good job of laying most of the object model out in logical order. (If you're unfamiliar with the term "object model," don't be intimidated - it's not that it's all that hard to master in small steps; it's just big; and you may be able to find what you want and apply it quickly.)

The book isn't perfect: I've found two errors, but that's not bad, considering its size. Overall, it's very authoritative.

While using this book, I occasionally needed to turn elsewhere for additional information. My favorite companion book is Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic for Applications 5, which has a strong orientation towards Excel. The bad news about both of these books is that they're getting old. I wouldn't yet call them "dated," but the authors/publishers will need to produce updated editions in the next few years. I, for one, really hope they do. That's the (selfish) reason for writing this review. I have to wonder, though, how many Word users will ever need a book this advanced.

I'm giving the book five stars, because it is, by far, the best ever written on its subject. I wouldn't want to do without it.

Post Script: I wrote this review in 2004. Now in 2010, I still use this book, although not as often. The online help has gotten better, much better than Excel's, by the way, and many new VBA features have accumulated over the years. There has not been a legitimate follow-on to this book. Hart-Davis has authored some other books, but their coverage of Word VBA isn't even a shadow of what's in this book. I've written my own book on Word, most of which is VBA. It's about 150 pages, but the bad news is that I wrote it as a reference for myself. It's a sad state of affairs when we have to resort to that. The mainstream publishers just must not have the market for this kind of thing. If you have a chance to pick up one of these cheap, I still recommend it. I had worn mine out and bought a replacement just last year!

I have to add one more point. If you had custom toolbars in Word 2003 or earlier, you may think you lost them when Word 2007 came along. Convert your old .doc files to .docm files. An Add-Ins tab will appear on the Word 2007 ribbon, and you'll find your toolbars on it. You can even convert your old normal.dot to normal.dotm and accomplish the same thing there! I have all of Microsoft's latest books on Word 2007, and none of them tell about that feature. I'm personally indebted to the Microsoft employee who put the feature in. There's a special place in heaven for that fine soul!

I bought this book because I needed to learn VBA for my job. The author does an excellent job explaining things and doesn't wander off into theory like many other books do. There are plenty of examples to learn from and after about three days of reading I had enough of an understanding of VBA to begin using the book as a reference to look up things I wanted to do. I saw another review state this book was her bible, I have to agree because this book stays by my side and has helped me learn what I needed to. If you need to learn VBA quickly and you don't have a background in programming buy this book!

The code of all programs, forms and templates are now available from the Sybex web site.

Guy Hart-Davis is my hero. As you can tell, I really love this book. I can honestly say that I've read it from cover-to-cover and that I use it on a daily basis when I am working. I had previous experience with Visual Basic and with developing in Access, but no experience in working with Word 2000. I couldn't do the project I am working on without this book. I find it very easy to flip to the section I am in need of and get help from his examples. If you want to develop applications in Word, buy it. I look forward to more books from Hart-Davis.

Before starting a major macro project, I purchased this book and "VB & VBA In a NutShell". What VBA language knowledge I possessed beforehand I had gathered from hither and yon and by experimenting with Word. This book was fundamental to understanding the object model and to understanding many specific areas (bookmarks, find and replace, section breaks, to name a few). However, it is dated and occasionally threadbare. You will still need to gather information from online forums and such to round out your knowledge. I read many reviews here before purchasing and I have no doubt that it is the best book of its kind, but it's still not enough. You will need this book for medium-to-large macro projects, but don't rely upon it exclusively.

I bought this book from a Word MVP recommendation.

I had previously learned Word VBA from the book "Word 97 Annoyances" (good start for people interested in Word VBA) and from many on line tutorials.

Guy Hart-Davis provides a complete guide to Word 2000 VBA language. It helped me to structure my work and gave me more ways to analyze my code. It helped to find out more possibilities of Word VBA. The author goes deeper into explaining all the tools available.

Plus there is a central idea.

Although VBA is a computer language programming, we should not forget that we are dealing with a Word Processor and that Word VBA is a tool for automation of repetitive tasks and getting your work faster. The author provides a view that does not forget this central point.

With a little of experience users will understand that a few times you will gain time if you record a macro and edit it rather than just trying to write the code from the beginning. Word VBA is not C or C++. This flexibility is clearly shown along the book. Yet, it also goes deeper into the complexities of Word VBA. So people interested in a more complete approach (like me) will be satisfied with the plethora of technical information

As the author mentions in one of the Introductory texts, this book does not force the reader to read it from cover to cover to start coding. It is well written and (not excessively) good-humored, what, truth to be told, makes it easier to read a 1200 pages book.

The author/publisher now posts the 'advertised' files on the sibex web site. They aren't organized as effectively as they could be but at least they are listed. (I would give the book 5 stars if if the files were more useful)

Guy obviously knows his stuff! I come to this book after developing a 1.2 mb WordBasic application for Word v 2 and with a fair amount of Visual Basic experience.

I was looking for a book that would present me with the 'ins and outs' of Word VBA and be useful as a reference as I developed my own applications. THIS BOOK EXCELS in meeting these objectives! Guy has done a great job So, while this book does not teach object oriented programming principles and conepts it DOES excel at giving a LOT of useful information on how to use the objects, methods and properties of Word 2000 VBA.

I looked far and long for a good Word VBA book and in my opinion this one is the best! Good job Guy!

Lots of imformation about MS Office Word Visual Basic Application programming. I have no problem reading this book, because I have some Visual Basic background. VBA is a subset of VB. Beefore reading this book, you may need to have some Visual Basic programming knowledge, because this book doesn't teach basic elemental syntex of programming.

The book boasts Intermediate - Advanced users, yet it's full of such basic operations as recording a macro, naming a macro. It's loaded with screen shots instead of useful sample, advanced programs. Basically, if you just run the recorder and note the code, you'll get the same thing that Mr. Hart provides us. The free MS-supplied VBA help file is much more useful.

This book is listed on Amazon twice! Once as "Handbook" and once as "Paperback". I have bothered to duplicate my post on both listings because I thought the book was so good.

I cannot give this book enough stars. It is really excellent for someone who is relatively new to programming (and or Word) but who is motivated to make VBA work for them in Word. The first time through the book (like all software books that I use) was an attempt to try to understand how VBA works and what it can do for you. I got lost in his explanations many times and my first impression was like the reviewer above (Ovma) who gave it only 3 stars. I could understand what the Author was saying, all of the paragraphs were easy to understand but I often got lost in the differences between "strings", "Variables" "Variants" "Objects", "Methods", "Arguments" "Constants" and the different types of variables. Guy Hart-Davis seemed to explain each term quickly and then assume the reader now understood each term as he moved on and referred back to the term. It wasn't until I started back through the book the second time that I realized that because the subject is so large, he often didn't address these terms in enough detail until later chapters where he explained them in more detail.

The second complaint I had (and the negative reviewer above had) was that the Author seemed to use very few examples of macros, often only having one example per chapter. Often he would explain one element of a process or command and then show a table and say: "Here are the other 500 commands that go with this one process" I thought that this would not be enough to address the millions of commands each function in VBA used. I did notice, however, that the examples he did present in the book were types of macros that I would find extremely useful. This book is already 1200 pages and I understood his need to be brief. The trick to learning VBA for Word was not to read the examples in the book presented, but to actually type them and run them. (Math is like that too. You can't watch the teacher work a problem on the board and expect to understand it. You HAVE to work the problems!) After I did that, I realized the examples were sufficient for me to master the process and make it work for me under any particular circumstance that I needed. As it turned out, the seemingly scarcity of macro examples that I thought existed was a strength. Just about any macro a reader might need could be subsequently created merely by using Word's macro recorder and adapting the commands proferred in the example.

This book did not have a CD. The codes in the examples were not available on the Author's web site. As it turned out, I did not miss any provided code in the slightest. The examples were just plain too easy to duplicate just by typing and recording and, really, learning to become proficient at recording macros was a skill that a reader/student MUST master right off the bat if they have any expectation of becoming skilled.

This book is for Word 2000 but I have Office 2007 and the interface is different. Many times I had to use help in 2007 to see the differences with Word 2000 but I was able to overcome the confusion and this book is not outdated in that respect.

About the last 1/3rd of this book covers things that are way too advanced for me. That part is still useful because occasionally you need something obscure for code and you can find it there.

This book is written for "WORD". Largely, variables that involve integers or decimals or functions that involve complex logical code are not addressed here as it would be in a book about Excel. The idea behind VBA for word is to create input boxes or autotext type macros that make typing automatic and easy. This book will allow you to master it and it makes the subject about as easy as it could be made. It takes an extremely large confusing topic and makes it (relatively) easy for someone new both to Word (as I am) or to programming.

After I had read this book but before I had worked through any of the example macros, I decided to order "VBA Developer's Handbook, 2nd Addition" by Ken Getz and Mike Gilbert. That book claimed to have a disk with Reusable Code for "more than 300 Programming Goals" There wasn't a single usable line of code in that entire book. It covered the most obscure and worthless processes I could possibly imagine. While I'm not fond of bashing someone's 1000 page work product, I have to say, that after trying to skim that book, I realized just what an excellent book "Word 2000 Developer's Handbook" was. After that, I was more inclined to look at the text harder and realized all of the things that I thought were lacking in the text were actually there for me to master with just a slower and more detailed effort.

It took me several full days reading the book and playing with macros to get the hang of VBA as it was intended to be used. I did already have some experience with WordPerfect for DOS macro language and I already knew what IF statements and GOTO statements were and how to manipulate the 50 commands that came with that crude code to make elegant and complex autotext type macros and documents. (Before that, in the late 70's I had used Fortran in College with card readers. You talk about useless!) I still think that anyone without that type of programming experience, someone with no experience can get the hang of VBA for word with this book. In fact, this book is probably the easiest way (if not most novices only option) to get the hang of it. Probably the hardest thing about it is that the subject is so dull. You really have to have a need for it. It is much more interesting when you do and that is what would give someone who has never had any experience at all with computer code the motivation to get through the text.