Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA

by John Walkenbach

Get the most out of Excel, Microsoft's powerful spreadsheet application. With John Walkenbach, the leading Excel expert better known as "Mr. Spreadsheet," discover better ways to analyze data and find... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764547992
• ISBN13: 9780764547997
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 984 Pages
• Weight: 3.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.1" x 7.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Good for beginners and intermediate alike

As someone who has some programming experience, this book was very helpful to me.The project I am working on was already defined, and all I had to do was look in the books where an example was given or a syntax reference existed. Note that I used it in alongside O'Reilly Press' 'Writing Excel Macros with VBA'. Where certain areas aren't covered in this book (rare), there will almost ceratinly be something in the other.As an intermediate level part-time but somewhat rusty programmer (mostly self-taught) of Java, C, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, Assembly and others, this book certainly had what I was looking for.It offers useful language references and the descriptions are ample, although occasionally apparently useful methods that were covered in 'the other' book and were overlooked in this one; it's just not possible to include everything though, even in ~1000 pages.It assumes some prior knowledge of programming techniques, and is therefore not for the absolute beginner, but will serve it's purpose very well indeed to the majority.I would recommend this book all except the absolute beginner and the advanced programmer/expert (who probably wouldn't be reading this anyway!). Definatly worth the money.I rarely buy books on the internet without having a good flick through them at the local bookshop first. In this case I would definatly advise likeminded thinkers to make an exception.The included CDROM is worth it's weight in gold and is all too often a crucial ommission by authours/publishers. I can now take the book with me on my laptop in PDF format (hooray!) and all of the book examples are included too. BONUS!

Excellent

John, if you read these reviews, ide just like to say well done!!Ive got quite a few books on VBA but this is by far the best.Im by no means an Excel guru, but found myself being asked to automate lots of tasks in excel for a new job I had. Im a VB/Database programmer by trade and I needed a book to bring me upto speed with the Excel Object model. The book done this and taught me a whole lot more in the process. Its well presented and the examples are all "realworld" which I found really handy.Fully recommended to any Excel/VBA beginner or reference for a guru.

Great book--highly recommended

I am a real estate finance analyst and researcher who wanted more control over the manipulation of my data in Excel as well as learning how to create user forms. John Walkenbach's "Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA" was an informative and excellent resource that taught me most of what I was looking for. Walkenbach begins with a brief explanation of Excel and the fundamentals of object-oriented programming (OOP), which underpins VBA. The reader has to be patient and be willing to experiment; working through Walkenbach's examples with Excel open is almost a must.There are several issues that I would like to point out. One reviewer was upset over the fact that Walkenbach did not offer some utilities from the book's CDs for free. I did not try any of the utilities because I was more interested in the book's actual contents and explanations. Walkenbach does, however, offer the reader a full and unrestricted PDF version of the book in the CD, which I think is mighty generous of him. Instead of lugging the +1,000 page book, I sometimes leave the PDF version on my laptop so I could always have it with me. Lastly, I use Excel 97 at work and Excel X on the Mac at home, and despite some minor incompatibility issues, I would say that the book for the most part could be used for all versions of Excel 97 and up.BTW, I would also recommend "Excel 2002 VBA" by Bullen, Green, Bovey, and Rosenberg published by Worx Press for a more advanced treatment of VBA.

A great book on VBA

I got this book and the author's other on Formulas. Although I am only using Excel 2000, I got it because I would be using Excel 2002 in the future. With no experience in VBA for MS apps, I needed something to get me up and running with writing macros from scratch. Familiar with VB6 I figure I can pick VBA up easily. I had a book on VBA from SAMS teach yourself series some years back, which I found dry and useless. I had thrown it away so I got this book.I was up and running in about two hours writing macros that would look down a column of data and find the last non-empty cell in a range that had empty cells between data cells. I also wrote macros to update a summary at the top of the worksheet depending on how much data was in a particular row and to advance to the next empty cell in a row after data was entered, assisting the user in entering/selecting data.Excellent and easy to understand. The real meat doesn't start until Chapter 7 when VBA is introduced. Prior to that is a refresher on formulas and Excel itself. I'm results oriented so I skimmed up to Chapter 7 before looking for answers to my problem. I am only in Chapter 9, before userforms, which is overkill for my needs at work but I will begin tinkering since it'll be done on my own time. Highly recommended for those who need a good solid intro to VBA. If you know VB, it'll be cake walk. For those who don't, there are plenty of examples to help you out and remember to understand the Excel object model. You should be all set if you at least try some of the examples instead of staring at the print.The only thing I think is missing is a listing of the methods and properties of the Excel object model. For that, I have "Excel 2002 VBA" by Wrox. Funny how I've only used that book for its listing in its appendix, which is several hundred pages long and easily worth the price of that book. But that's another review...