Writing Excel Macros [Paperback]

Steven Roman PhD (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 1999

Microsoft Excel is an enormously powerful and flexible application. Yet despite its powerful feature set, there is a great deal that Excel either does not allow you to do or does not allow you to do easily through its user interface. And in spite of Excel's reputation as the most widely used spreadsheet application, the majority of its users do not venture beyond the basics of creating spreadsheets and perhaps dabbling with macros. Consequently, these users aren't getting all the power out of this formidable application.

With Writing Excel Macros you will learn there are many things you can do at the programming level that you cannot do at the user-interface level, that is, with the menus and dialog boxes of Excel. And learning how to get more power out of Excel will mean you can be more effective in your work.

Writing Excel Macros offers a solid introduction to writing VBA macros and programs and provides Excel users and programmers unfamiliar with the Excel object model with an excellent overview to writing VBA macros and programs. The essentials of the VBA language and the Excel object model are covered so that, when you have finished the book, you will know enough about Excel VBA to begin creating effective working programs.

In particular, the book focuses on:

• Programming languages. Brief overview of programming and programming languages, as well as information on Variables, Data Types, and Constants, Functions and Subroutines, and more.
• The Visual Basic Editor. Before tackling the basics of the programming language that Excel uses, the reader is acquainted with the VBA environment--the Visual Basic Editor.
• Handling your code. An overview of where to store your code and how to activate it from an Excel spreadsheet.
• The Excel object model. An in-depth overview of the Excel object model, including the Application, Workbook, Worksheet, and Range objects.
• Appendices. Details on the Shape object; getting the Installed Printers; Command Bar Controls and Face IDs; programming Excel from another application; and more.

The information in this book is written in a succinct, practical manner that is characteristic of Steve Roman's straightforward approach. Readers will find useful examples throughout the book that deal with specific programming problems and allow them to gain hands-on experience in the VBA environment. Whether your interest in Excel programming is so you can be more effective in your work, or you want to learn how to write Excel programs for others to use, this book offers a solid introduction to writing VBA macros and programs and shows you how to get more power out of Excel at the programming level.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Microsoft Excel can help you find solutions to all kinds of financial, scientific, engineering, and management problems. But most Excel users take advantage of only a small portion of Excel's flexibility. Writing Excel Macros explains how to use the customization features in Excel 97 and Excel 2000 to maximize their usefulness, even if you have no programming experience. Anyone with a bit of Excel familiarity will be able to follow this book.

Inside you'll find everything you need to know to write Excel macros. Readers find out, for example, how to make a dialog box appear that will prompt the user for a value and then insert that value into a key spreadsheet cell. Writing Excel Macros maintains its easy-to-follow style even as it gets into the Excel object model, which is how the program makes certain aspects of itself and its data files available for manipulation in macros. There are a lot of sample macros included too, and it's easy to copy them into your own documents (either by hand or by downloading them from the Web). --David Wall

Topics covered: Excel 97 and 2000 macros (and structure), using the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), values, variables, functions, loops, and conditional statements.

From Library Journal

In terms of environments, you can't get any more programmable than Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet. There are lots that can be done with the built-in functions, but programmers still need functionality not designed into the system. Users unaccustomed to writing macros will be lost in macro programming hell if they don't have Roman's book. Roman assumes his readers are already real programmers but not yet familiar with the Excel object model and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). His manual starts first with an introduction and then includes a discussion of the Visual Basic Editor and the VBA language and practical examples of the Excel object model. Definitely not for beginners, this is written specifically for Microsoft Version 8 (Office 97) and Version 9 (Office 2000).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 554 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st ed edition (May 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565925874
• ISBN-13: 978-1565925878
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,637,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite helpful, June 23, 2000

By 

Giuseppe A. Paleologo "gappy" (Riverdale, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Writing Excel Macros (Paperback)

This book is not aimed at absolute beginners, although it pretends to be (it contains short descriptions of other languages, and devotes some time to elementary concepts). It will be appreciated by readers with some minimal programming experience, like all O'Reilly books. For novices, I'd suggest the readable "Excel 2000 for Dummies" by G.Harvey. In brief, the book's virtues are clarity and brevity. 500 pages is below average for a sector full of bloated manuals. These two virtues alone justify the 4 stars of my rating.

The shortcomings are the incompleteness of the treatment. Structures and objects are not really introduced, but you can't have it all in a slim book, and the author in the firy first pages warns the reader that this is a book for average-complexity macros. There are (minor) typos here and there, and in each chapter the author shamelessly promotes other publications and software tools written by him. A more impartial bibliography would have been appreciated. Yet, in my opinion these are minor flaws.

Personally, I would have liked an even more synthetic style in exchange for a more comprehensive treatment. In any event, O'Reilly offers a VBA "nutshell" book that is supposed to be good. The author has also written a book on Object-Oriented-Programming in VBA, edited by Springer-Verlag.

In synthesis, whatever topic the author chooses to cover in the book, he does cover it very well. But some essential aspects of VBA are missing, and they could have been added with little effort. Still, the book is reasonably priced, well written and well edited. Overall, a good buy.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could be a lot more helpful!, November 18, 2000

By 

A. Rhodes "avrhodes" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Writing Excel Macros (Paperback)

I was excited to see this book because I do a lot of macro programming in Excel. I am not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination but I do know lower level programming quite well.

I'm sorry to say that this book is a big dissapointment. The author starts off by saying that this book is meant for more advanced users but is good for begineers as well. Unfortunately even someone like me, who writes macros all the time, I found the book hard to follow at times. The book mainly lacks because it doesnt have many good examples that begineers can follow or have a good reference section for more advanced people that just need to look up syntax.

Finally, the index of this book is terrible. Don't bother looking there unless you want to find something which is already obvious from the Table of Contents. When I need to reference something I usually just have to flip through the pages until I find it. The author does however plug some sort of program he is written that shows the hierarchy of the Excel VBA. Unfortunately this program will also cost you 75 bucks. The author also throws in some other books he has written that he might like you to buy.

Unfortunately there aren't many books out there to compete with this one. If you need a book on this specific topic and you can deal with a poor index and the author trying to sell you something every so often it is not too bad. However, you are not missing much at all if you pass this one up.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No nonsense guide to get results quickly, August 8, 1999

By 

AlexS (Sunnyvale, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Excel Macros (Paperback)

This book is definitely not for beginners and not a good reference to the VBA Basic language or the Excel objects.

The author introduces well the operation of the Excel Visual Basic Editor along with a brief and quite incomplete introduction of the Basic language. A good VBA Basic book is recommended as another side reference. The Excel object models, which are extensive, powerful, and vague, are discussed very well with a lot of examples. Unfortunately, the index at the back of the book lacks considerably such that I was forced to search relevant items by thumbing through the book. The Excel objects are learned mostly from the examples and the use of Excel macro recording facilities. A more thorough and detailed tree structure of the objects would help a lot; instead the author prefers to offer his $79.95 Object Browser software. . The author does share many insights into his experience with Excel objects and offers recommendations to avoid pitfalls. The explanation of the creation of custom menus is quite difficult to understand, however the author does offer sufficient example code to learn it. Recommended for intermediate and advanced programmers. The alternative is Weber's book, which is not better and is more expensive.