Office 2003 Programming: Real World Applications (Paperback)

~ Ty Anderson (Author)
Key Phrases: summary budget, budget template, email templates, Bravo Corp, Private Sub, Public Sub (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

(Author Ty Anderson) seems to 'get it'… The book is cool because he spends a lot of time defining the problems that he solves and shows why X or Y was chosen. ...aimed at experienced VB6 and VB.Net developers who want to get something up and running with Office as quickly as possible in order to solve a specific business problem.</a></p> </blockquote> <p id="quoteAuthor">&#8212; Bill Coan, Programming Office</p></div>

<p>Office 2003 has been enhanced to improve development and integration with Visual Basic business applications. And that's what this book is all about: providing a set of real-world, VB-oriented business applications that utilize, customize, and extend Microsoft Office applications! From presentation and document generators, to a budget consolidator and a timesheet system, this book is packed with applications to improve your productivity.</p> <p>This book is not merely a reference for the Office development platform. Instead, it is about building useful applications with the Office platform and solving specific business problems. The code and sample applications remain the focus, though key transferable programming skills will be highlighted at each stage. Throughout the book, author Ty Anderson demonstrates a variety of approaches&emdash; from cutting-edge to more traditional. This includes:</p> • Enabling cross-platform collaboration with XML, web services, and InfoPath<br/> • Creating a streamlined process workflow with smart tags and the Information Bridge Framework<br/> • Writing .NET code behind Excel applications using Visual Studio Tools for Office<br/> • Automating common Office tasks with VBA and COM add-ins<br/> <p>Each chapter presents a separate, fully-functioning application that is ready for use (or can be easily adapted to suit your own business requirements). So if you are a Visual Basic developer (6.0 or .NET) interested in building business applications with Office 2003, this book will provide exactly the skills you need.</p>

About the Author

Ty Anderson runs a consultancy in Dallas and specializes in professional, actually used and working information management applications. Starting out as an accountant with Pricewaterhouse, Anderson eventually fell into development and systems development in the finance industry. He now designs, executes, and offers training on his own Office-centric applications delivered to small to medium-large firms. Anderson is a regular contributor to MSDN Office Library.

Product Details

• Paperback: 466 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590591399
• ISBN-13: 978-1590591390
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #759,965 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling content - Flawed execution, February 26, 2005

By	KKop (Atlanta, GA - USA) - See all my reviews

This was a book I had been looking for for a long time. The content will be a treasure trove of ideas for those interested in office programming.

However...
(This relates to chapter 7, the first chapter I jumped to)
The code as it is in the book will NEVER work. Even though no errata for the book are listed, the code in the book differs significantly from the code available for download from the apress site. So I changed my code to reflect that. This fixed some of the bugs, but others remained.

Not until I changed the code to call the correct database column names (which are mismatched in the book AND in the downloadable code) did the webservice work.

Who proofreads these books anyway? This doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence in apress books. Not exactly $39.99 well spent.

A book I might still recommend to others, but only because it's the only book of its kind available right now.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book got me a promotion !, January 27, 2005

By	Robert Draper "Design/Sales Engineer" (Oregon City, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a must have book for anyone who uses MS Office tools.
It makes great use of Office 2003 its new .Net integrated features.

When the company I work for broke up into business units I suddenly was wearing many hats. With little experience in administation, I quickly began to seek out ways to streamline the process. Try to reduce things like double entrys, nagging action reports, and headaches from poor follow up on sales calls.
With that in mind I bought Ty Anderson's book.

This book was more advanced than my skill level when I bought it, but it's helped me to finally get a handle on vb.net. The book is chock full of meat and potatoes stuff that bases itself from software I do know, things like excel, word and some access.
Like the editorial review says, it has ready to go apps.
All you need is Office 2003pro and Visual Studio Tools for Office and your in business.

The author does a great job of breaking down the code in a very straight forward, no words wasted kind of way. And provides great apps which offer another way to reverse understand things.
I made use of the word doc generator and outlook to organise my client contact info and todo lists. It got me praise and recognition at my work, Now Im a the team leader!
A Great investment.

Ive bought a whole mess of books trying to filter out usefull stuff. This one is all about usefull applications for Office.
If your a novice like me ,it will get you excited about learning to be a developer. If your skill set is more advanced it will be even more usefull, as it provides the building blocks for an endless array of usefull applications.
Two thumbs way up..
I'd also recommend Inside Access 2003.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good use cases, January 30, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The emphasis of the book is given by the subtitle - 'real world applications'. Anderson essentially provides 9 use cases of programming MS Office 2003; one per chapter and written in Visual Basic. These cases can be valuable to you on several levels.

Firstly, if you are new to Visual Basic, then the book gives extended examples to improve your understanding.

Secondly, and obviously, to see how you can program the various and myriad components of Office 2003, from the UI to accessing a database and using XML. Very nontrivial, as you might appreciate from the level of detail in the chapters.

Thirdly, it is to find that one of the chapters actually fills a current need, and so you can just copy its code, perhaps with only some simple changes. While the book certainly suggests you can do this, it may actually be rare in practice.