Rating: 
Summary: Not a great introduction to VBA...
Review: Format is a little scattered, and topics not nearly explained enough. You would be better served using another resource for a good intro to VBA.And the accompanying CD is pretty much worthless. Nothing of great value on it.
Rating: 
Summary: VBA by Dummies
Review: I am truly scratching my head trying to understand how this book received so many five star reviews on the Amazon site. Perhaps the author's friends wrote these reviews.
Anyway, let's set the record straight.
"VBA for Dummies" by John Paul Mueller is like taking a really bad computer class. A glance at the description of the author will give you an idea why. Mueller has apparently never taught a computer class.
Basically, the explanations in this book are not very clear and have hardly been simplified to accommodate the novice. The chapter on creating VBA forms is a good example. Nowhere in the chapter is there a single mention of the basic idea that to access and modify a form's code, you have to double-click on the form itself within the IDE (upon which the code window pops up). Also, it is not explained very clearly that each time you add a form to a spreadsheet or document you must essentially create two sets of VBA code, i.e. one for the form and one in a module that connects the form to the spreadsheet or document and is necessary to display the form.
The chapter on object-oriented programming, debatably the most crucial, is completely useless to anyone who has never before dealt with concepts like objects, classes, properties, and methods. In fact, the author does not even give an explanation of exactly what object-oriented programming is in the first place. While the examples of code in the chapter are very clever, they do not give an idea about how objects, classes, properties, or methods are really used.
The author prefaces the book by saying that "VBA for Dummies" assumes only that you have a solid understanding of Microsoft Windows and at least one Microsoft Office program. In fact, if you have no programming experience (with either VB or any another language), it will be very difficult with this book alone to learn VBA well enough to even write a simple macro without error. The book should be retitled perhaps "VBA for Definitely Not Total Dummies."
Rating:
Summary: If you already know VB, this book is not for you
Review: I bought "VBA for Dummies" hoping to bridge my knowledge of VB into the MS applications. Anyone even a little familiar with using the VB language inside Word or Excel macros knows that the real study is how the internal application commands can be issued through the VB coding structure. While Cummings knows a good deal about VB, he ultimately recommends that the reader use the Word and Excel help screens to learn how VB uses the application commands. Unfortunately, a book about VBA needs to be about how to invoke these application commands from within the VB structure. Not going into these is like promising to teach how to cook a spaghetti dinner, and only explaining how to boil water. If you don't already know VB, then pick up Wallace Wang's "Visual Basic 6 for Windows for Dummies". It gets half the VBA job done. I'm still waiting for someone to write the other half.
Rating:
Summary: If you already know VB, this book is not for you
Review: I bought "VBA for Dummies" hoping to bridge my knowledge of VB into the MS applications. Anyone even a little familiar with using the VB language inside Word or Excel macros knows that the real study is how the internal application commands can be issued through the VB coding structure. While Cummings knows a good deal about VB, he ultimately recommends that the reader use the Word and Excel help screens to learn how VB uses the application commands. Unfortunately, a book about VBA needs to be about how to invoke these application commands from within the VB structure. Not going into these is like promising to teach how to cook a spaghetti dinner, and only explaining how to boil water. If you don't already know VB, then pick up Wallace Wang's "Visual Basic 6 for Windows for Dummies". It gets half the VBA job done. I'm still waiting for someone to write the other half.
Rating:
Summary: Not great. Does have some value.
Review: I found this book nowhere near as helpful as other Dummies books on VBA programming. If you want another good starter book, I would recommend "Access 97 Programming for Dummies", which is full of real world examples that will help you understand VBA. The author just seemed to get too cute with the subject matter. Also, the lack of real world examples really hurts this book. You can't step into object-oriented programming when you decide to invent your own objects for everything. The explanation of how loops work is okay and the constants information is not bad. Overall, however, get a real technical book and try to learn it that way. It will be harder, but you will be better for it.
Rating:
Summary: Not great. Does have some value.
Review: I found this book nowhere near as helpful as other Dummies books on VBA programming. If you want another good starter book, I would recommend "Access 97 Programming for Dummies", which is full of real world examples that will help you understand VBA. The author just seemed to get too cute with the subject matter. Also, the lack of real world examples really hurts this book. You can't step into object-oriented programming when you decide to invent your own objects for everything. The explanation of how loops work is okay and the constants information is not bad. Overall, however, get a real technical book and try to learn it that way. It will be harder, but you will be better for it.
Rating: 
Summary: good to get your feet wet
Review: I had taken a crash course on VB a few years ago and not touched it since. When I went to start using VBA at work, I quickly realized I didn't remember a single thing. I picked this book up and, within a week, had started on my program.
The book's focus, as a For Dummies book, is to get the novice started, not to squeeze functionality out for intermediate users. Sure, the book didn't cover all the topics I needed help on, but it did help me figure out 90% of my code.
At the same time, it does require the reader to do some of their own thinking, but if the reader can't do that, programming isn't really a good idea for them.
As far as other reader suggestions to just buy a VB book, that is disingenuous. A VB primer isn't going to show you how to use VB within Microsoft Applications, which is what nearly half of this book is about.
In short, don't get this book if you know the language already and looking to learn more. But don't expect the book to right your programs for you. But do get the book if you need a place to start and don't mind doing some work for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Good transition from Excel VBA to VBA / VB
Review: I learned VBA via Excel, but felt limited by my Excel-centric world and wanted get a broader VBA/VB perspective. By introducing topics like ActiveX controls and text stream objects with a minimum of hard-to-understand terminology, this book helped me reach my goal.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for dummies!
Review: I picked up this book at a local bookstore (sorry Amazon), mainly because it was the only VBA book they had. This book allowed me to learn a lot of the concepts of VBA programming, in connection with Word 97 Annoyances, and VB&VBA Programming in a Nutshell. I recommend it to beginning VB programmers, like I was. It helped me get above the basics, fast. It's easy to discount these Dummies books, and most of them are so "Dummy" that they aren't worth the effort, but this one is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Better than fat VBA books
Review: I tried using Access 97 Programming Unleashed to learn VBA. I got more out of the smaller VBA for Dummies book than the 850 page Unleased book. I especially liked the way it broke down the parts the VB Editor. This book doesn't try to do a lot of things like fat books do, but sticks to the main topic, VBA. I liked it because it's small and doesn't break my arm when I read it. On the less positive side it had isolated pieces of code that you can't really use without some expertise and it doesn't cover Access very well.
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