VBA Developer's Handbook, 2nd Edition

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Summary: Good for Excel and Access Programmer's
Review: After browsing through 200 pages that talked in-depth and almost exclusively about string and date manipulation functions, I realized that this book is not for me. I decided to return it. If I ever delve deeply into accounting apps, I'll grab this book again. It's a great book! The one flaw is that it sells itself as an OFFICE book, when it's focus in a practical sense is really toward Excel and even moreso, Access Programmers.

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Summary: Authoritative, expertly written, almost biblical !
Review: After perusing this text in the bookstore, I knew that I had to have it. Great text! It is exactly what it says...VBA Developer's Handbook. It deals with pure VBA, and is not specific to any application that might license VBA. Perfect ! A plethora of useful functions is waiting for you. I added exceptional classes to my repository of code the same day. Not for the faint-of-heart beginner though. I would suggest this for intermediate to hardcore VB programmers. This reference fills a niche and doesn't ramble on about a lot of apps and their implementation of VBA. Very Excel and Access-oriented however in discussing techniques and logically so. If you're looking for app-specific texts on VBA or database access, then go with a detailed reference that states its purpose as such. Also very heavy on string manipulation with excellent examples if your code requires it. Thankfully, it is written with a "use me when you need me" approach as acknowledged by the author. No fluff and very modular. VBA Developer's Handbook is perfect for solving specific problems for VB or VBA in general. This is the venerable type of text that stands the test of time. Intermediate programmers should jump on this !

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Summary: VBA Developer's Handbook
Review: As a more traditional Java/C++ developer I always scoffed at VBA and VB. When I began to develop using VB and VBA I was surprised to see how quickly and easily I could get things done and how well they worked. Now that I'm doing a number of more advanced things with multiple VBA enabled applications. This book has been a must have! Great examples, gets right to the good stuff, and skips the novice crap. If your looking to maximize your use of VBA this is a must have!

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Summary: Good handbook and reference for VB code
Review: As mentioned by another reviewer, this book is concerned less with the VBA behind office, than with writing general visual basic code. The topics are all extremely useful, especially class modules, error-handling and some well presented API wrappers, but don't expect to find anything Office-specific, or any use of VB controls

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Summary: Reference Book
Review: Finally there is a book that addresses advanced/state-of-the-art topics and program functionality in VBA. Most other VBA books end their discussion of object-oriented constructs and custom classes with a weak example of a collection class. This book goes way beyond into custom events, interface and implementation classes, and error handling. You're left with the feeling that you have access to all the armament VBA has to offer. Plus, there are lot's of tips & tricks for everything else, and lot's of code you need but haven't had the time to write yourself.

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Summary: Object-Oriented Programming in VBA
Review: Finally there is a book that addresses advanced/state-of-the-art topics and program functionality in VBA. Most other VBA books end their discussion of object-oriented constructs and custom classes with a weak example of a collection class. This book goes way beyond into custom events, interface and implementation classes, and error handling. You're left with the feeling that you have access to all the armament VBA has to offer. Plus, there are lot's of tips & tricks for everything else, and lot's of code you need but haven't had the time to write yourself.

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Summary: Reference Book
Review: Good reference book... help you find tricks to do automation and to maximize the output of your VBA code. Not for newbies.

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Summary: Great Book. For Intermediate Programmers. Highly Recommended
Review: Great amount of sample code. Intermediate topics start off with how to Encrypt using XOR... or find the last occurrence of a substring in a string and move quickly up from there. These are valuable algorithms and code. As the authors quote Lionel Trilling "Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal." You will find this code very usable in your own work: particularly if you use Excel97 or Access97. This book is a wide collection of routines, organized around main topics. The authors demonstrate their object oriented VBA classes that make API calls to extend Excel and Access functionality. They provide a cd-rom with the source code to the samples. You get classes for Excel97 and one for Access97. They don't describe the inside of that code, but they do show you how to use it. Overall I would call this a VBA Cookbook. Lots of code for when you are stuck on a VBA problem. Need the code to enumerate Registry Keys and Values... no sweat, see page 568. Want a VB class to manipulate the Registry? They provide it on disk. There is actually more here than the authors can adequately describe in detail. And the book is over 900 pages! Overall I'd say it's a real find for VBA programmers.

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Summary: In at the deep end.
Review: Having been dropped in the at the deep end at work, Having to re-create many Excel spreadsheets, in a very short time frame I found this book easy to understand and having the ready made code available helped make the work load a little lighter,As a previous review said " it's a VBA Cookbook" thanks.The way the information is grouped together with the little comments helped a great deal. In all this book answers a lot of every day problems with either the code for a quick fix or the information to help you in the right direction with a good grounding. Thanks again.

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Summary: If you're a VBA developer, you need this book!
Review: I couldn't believe how much useful, reusable code I found in this book. I also don't understand the complaints people have about this book not being about VBA. I just don't get it -- it's ALL about VBA, the language. And I haven't found any book that covers the language better. It's useful for me, as a mostly Excel developer, as well as anyone using any flavor of VBA, including VB5 or VB6. So don't believe these folks that seem to think VBA is a macro thing for Office, and a VBA book should be about programming Office -- it's not, it's a language, and I'm really happy with the tools I've gotten from reading this book. Just the classes showing how to read and write from the registry alone were worth the price of the book.