Writing Excel Macros

Rating:
Summary: Great resource
Review: I find this book to be an indispensable resource in my work customizing Excel for a global financial institution. Being a self-taught programmer, I find some of the text a huge bore and mainly use the code examples, rewriting it to fit my needs. I do not waste my time going through his exercises because they seem laborious and I need fast answers. For that, however, it has proved itself invaluable. I will admit that the examples are so plain vanilla in here that you have to know how to use Excel and VBA to apply them to actual situations. Without this book, though, just having those manuals isn't enough. It really fills out the missing info. When you find yourself stuck, you'll be glad you have it.

Rating:
Summary: Good text - bad examples
Review: I have read several of Steven Roman's books. He knows the subject well, and his information about the VBA development environment is very good, even if it is repeated in several of his VBA and macro books. The information on creating custom toolbars and menus is the clearest that I have seen. He also gives a complete list of all the internal menus, toolbar buttons and icons available in Excel.

On the downside - Mr. Roman is terrible at presenting useful examples. In this book he has a complex example that runs through the text. I prefer that each topic has its own examples. I do not want to build an example application by reading and working through chapters that I am not very interested in, just to be able to work with the examples in the sections I am interested in. The author even mentions that he would normally present the book's material in a different sequence, but that would not follow what is needed for his example.

Other books by Mr. Roman also have these complex examples. He is a professor of mathematics and he uses a Turing engine in his Visual Basic Objects book. A lot of programmers, and would-be programmers, do not have an extensive math background. A more common and mundane example would have been preferable.

Rating:
Summary: Still good, even with XP
Review: I'm adding to my review of 2 years ago because I'm amazed that even though I'm now using XP with Microsoft Office 2002, this book is still useful. Although some of the actual code is unusable (and was unusable with 97), it still points me in the right direction. I can't believe I still find information in here that can't be found in other VBA & Excel programming reference books. I have so many of them, and I always find that this book keeps me on the right track where others drop off. It's definitely true that one must keep several Excel & VBA books on hand because they all have incorrect info here and there, and no one volume covers everything. But while I will probably be letting go of a few others now that my firm has (finally) upgraded, this is one I'm gonna keep.

Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: The author refers to his book as "An introduction to programming in Excel VBA". This is totally a misleading description. This is NOT a first book in programming. If you are new to this subject and looking to read a first introductory book then stay away from this book. Otherwise, you will be totally confused and will give up in frustration way before you finish the book.

Having said that if you do have some experience programming and playing around with Excel Macros then you will not be disappointed. The author provides you in a compact and succint manner with the fundamental concepts necessary to carry out the programming projects in Excel VBA. This is not a reference book to look up things. This book is meant and written to be read starting from first chapter and on. It is probably useless if you have a specific project or task in mind but it is great as far as giving you a general map how all Excel VBA projects should be organized and be tackled.

Rating:
Summary: No nonsense guide to get results quickly
Review: 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.