VBA for Modelers: Developing Decision Support Systems Using Microsoft« Excel

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book. More then satisfied !!!
Review: Absolutely agree with Mr.Weiqin Xie. I took this book from corporative library with intention to get help for my first degree completion project in Industrial management, where I really needed to increase my productivity in processing a lot of data,
and just can't bring it back extending my holding over and over again. I have already ordered it and waiting for delivery. I not only successfully completed the project but started to develop useful utilities in my job and decision support application for my investments needs and all of this owing to just few first chapters.

Rating:
Summary: Really good stuff
Review: I bought the book to get up to speed with VBA and I found the pace of the book good with some excellent examples which I found reasonably easy to understand. Good sections to test your knowledge at the end of each chptr "well advised to do these it really helped me". Only missed out on 5 stars as some areas we lightly covered.

Rating:
Summary: I like to give this book at least 10 stars!
Review: I don't know why nobody wrote any review on this excellent Excel VBA book, but I can't wait any longer. I have had it since May - based on the recommendation from the author's colleague, Dr. Wayne Winston, who wrote another good Excel book on using Excel formulas and Addin to make financial models. In my first week reading, I knew 5 starts are not fair enough for this book. Now I think even 15 stars are too less. It's packed with so many clever VBA examples you can't find in any 5 star books. The author is too humble to use "advanced" or "complete" on the title, but only presents to the readers good VBA examples on each topics (from programming skills to business application), moving on the learning curve gradually and explaining the logic and construction of the program step by step. When I read this book, I have the feeling as reading a good chess book written by a chess master. I hope more authors of computer programming books can do the same thing. The main title of the book is too modest, while the subtitle may keep most readers away. In fact, you really don't have to take Management Sceince or MBA courses to understand the examples (I never took business courses, but read some books on finance and investment). Besides, I think any kind of readers would be benifited from this book, but non-programmer readers or those who don't have general business background may not be able to finish the whole book. At last but not the least, the book has very few unimportant error, but the code on the CD is error-free and works. Try it, you will join with me to add more stars to this book. If you haven't read this book, you haven't read any real "advanced" Excel VBA book yet.

Rating:
Summary: The best book to learn VBA programming for Excel
Review: I looked through some 5 rated books on the subject before and after buying this book. Honestly, this is just simply THE BEST. It introduces to the reader basically all the concepts you need to learn to start writing VBA code for excel. It is just excellent, because there is both theory and very practical examples. You do not need to know anything about programming to start this book. Only thanks to this book (the other books that I tried to read where just useless for me) currently I am writing VBA codes in excel, which allowed to decrease routine works with excel at work from several hours to a matter of several minutes. It is really fascinating.
If you do not know much about VBA programming in Excel. This is the book to get.
Reference books such as Excel 2002 VBA: Programmers Reference are not useful, because they are references, they do not really teach unless you know what you are looking for.
Before buying this book I tried Advanced modelling in finance using Excel and VBA. No comparison.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect for the Excel user
Review: I started reading this book because I was interested in creating decision support systems for Microsoft Excel. Because of time constraints, i did not get to read the whole book. However, the first 6 or 7 chapters of this book have helped me grasp the basics of VBA perfectly. I have saved a great many hours (spent previously doing repetitive mind-numbing tasks in excel) by writing a few simple lines of code (and remember, I have very little programming experience). I hope to learn even more by reading the whole book, but trust me, this book is worth its price, just for the first few chapters

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Many Excel VBA books are a bunch of clever examples that you won't be able to apply to anything. This is the only book I have found with good examples about how to move around a spreadsheet using VBA. For some reason this is left out of most books.

Rating:
Summary: Tells you just what you need to know
Review: This book is excellent for the person who simply wants to expand their ability to use Excel without becoming a VBA expert. Most books on VBA seem to be written for computer professionals who, for example, seem to want to know about every data type that can be handled before learning anything else. Most of us would rather just learn how to do the things we need to do. This book uses this much more useful route (for ordinary folks)and tells us how to do the basic kind of stuff that we need to do (and that isn't at all obvious how to do): Key topics are accessing data in a range of a worksheet, outputting data to a range, writing a function, etc. etc. It only tells you what you need to know and it explains it all clearly. I had banged my head against a wall before finding this book and it answered all my questions and dissipated all my frustrations. I've recommended it to many of my friends.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best!
Review: This book provides the necessary knowledge for building advanced systems for quantitative analysis in Excel.
It covers all relevant aspects of programming with VBA which are necessary for building a decision support system and introduces the concepts by examples often found in the book "Practical Management Science" from Winston and Albright. From a didactic point of view the structure is very good because the first examples are easy to understand while the later ones are quite sophisticated. All in all it is an excellent textbook for teaching graduate MBA students who are interested in programming and have a good background in management science.

Rating:
Summary: Not what they are marketing!
Review: This is not definitely a book for someone that doesn't know the basics of VBA. Even that the book claims to be useful for beginners, which is the main marketing hook, many things simply doesn't makes any sense if you don't have some background in VBA. I recommend this book for anyone with an intermediate or advance level knowledge of VBA, who wants to get an insight on how to use its power for developing "management science type" modeling solutions.

Rating:
Summary: A VBA for Excel Jewel
Review: VBA for Modelers by Albright is a jewel. The author, who's other books include Practical Management Science: Spreadsheet Modeling and Applications and Data Analysis & Decision Making with Microsoft Excel among others, targets this book for those with little or no programming experience. Forget the Excel VBA coverage in books like Benninga's Financial Modeling or Advanced Modeling in Finance Using Excel and VBA by Jackson and Staunton. Each of these books has strengths but their coverages of VBA is considerably more disjointed and sketchy. At best, Benninga and Jackson and Staunton can be said to "demonstrate" how VBA can enhance financial modeling in Excel, while providing little in the way of quality instruction on VBA.

Albright's strength is concise, effective language supplemented with numerous examples and an ample number of extended exercises which enable readers to solidify and extend understanding. Chapters 1-13 are a quality VBA primer for readers with little or no programming experience. A distinguishing feature of the book is the coverage in Chapters 14-30 where specific applications are demonstrated and extended. The real strength of this book is that it is written by a fine educator who develops understanding in a systematic and effective fashion. With some work on the reader's part this book provides rewarding results.