Sams Teach Yourself Excel 2000 Programming in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: Best of many choices
Review: I tried two other books and one on-line source before I found "Sams Teach Yourself Excel 2000 Programming in 21 Days." I wish it had been the first resource I had found. One book I tried, ostensibly labeled "for beginners" was in fact better suited for an intermediate. The other book gave examples of some neat things you can do in VBA, but gave no background or mechanics, i.e. the rationale and assumptions behind visual basic code and procedures.

The Sams book gives you the "meat," from the ground up - not just a bunch of code to copy into the VBE. The learner is given the much needed what, when, where, and why behind VBA.

My only criticism of the book is the title. The book is LARGE. You could complete it in 21 days if you worked through it 12 hours a day for 21 days (not including any review time). The title also seems rather "cheesy" for a tome worthy of a university classroom.

Rating:
Summary: Best of many choices
Review: I tried two other books and one on-line source before I found "Sams Teach Yourself Excel 2000 Programming in 21 Days." I wish it had been the first resource I had found. One book I tried, ostensibly labeled "for beginners" was in fact better suited for an intermediate. The other book gave examples of some neat things you can do in VBA, but gave no background or mechanics, i.e. the rationale and assumptions behind visual basic code and procedures.

The Sams book gives you the "meat," from the ground up - not just a bunch of code to copy into the VBE. The learner is given the much needed what, when, where, and why behind VBA.

My only criticism of the book is the title. The book is LARGE. You could complete it in 21 days if you worked through it 12 hours a day for 21 days (not including any review time). The title also seems rather "cheesy" for a tome worthy of a university classroom.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best VBA book
Review: I was very impressed with this book for about the first 3 chapters. As I got into the more code-oriented sections, I became less impressed. This book contains tons of great information, but it is often hard to get to. The author is too wordy when trying to make his points so the important things tend to get lost. There are lots of code examples in the book but not good ones. The author frequently follows his examples by saying 'you will never do this' and then gives the reason why. I would prefer examples that I might actually be able to use some day even if they are harder to understand. He does have terrific exercises at the end of each chapter. I learned more from doing the exercises then I did reading the chapters.

I think any one who reads this book and does all the exercises will have a good basis for writing VBA, but I also think you could do better by getting the latest edition of Power Programming Techniques by John Walkenbach.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best VBA book
Review: I was very impressed with this book for about the first 3 chapters. As I got into the more code-oriented sections, I became less impressed. This book contains tons of great information, but it is often hard to get to. The author is too wordy when trying to make his points so the important things tend to get lost. There are lots of code examples in the book but not good ones. The author frequently follows his examples by saying 'you will never do this' and then gives the reason why. I would prefer examples that I might actually be able to use some day even if they are harder to understand. He does have terrific exercises at the end of each chapter. I learned more from doing the exercises then I did reading the chapters.

I think any one who reads this book and does all the exercises will have a good basis for writing VBA, but I also think you could do better by getting the latest edition of Power Programming Techniques by John Walkenbach.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for someone NEW to programming
Review: This book explains Excel VBA in a way very easy to understand.However if someone has a programming experience, the book could be boring. The index is excellent and is a very good reference.

Although designed for beginers it goes to more advanced subjects.
Ideally this book should be read first, followed by a more practical book like Walkenbach's Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA- which by the way is much more pleasant to read.
The title is misleading, it should better be named "Learn Excel Programming in 41 Long Days".

Rating:
Summary: Great Buy!
Review: This was a very good book. The book contained excellent explanations for the code examples. There are lots of useful code examples, which are downloadable through the internet. The code examples are 99% error free. The book is pretty cheap considering the size, over a thousand pages. It took me 10 weeks to complete it. More than half of the information provided is useful for all the other implementations of VBA, such as Access, Word, etc. You will really be teaching yourself a great deal though not in 21 days, but more like in 70 days.