Best excel macro (vba) book currently ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter scott23
  • Start date Start date
S

scott23

Can someone offer some advice as to the best book for a
begginer/intermediate looking to get away from recording macros'...
and start writing them ?
Thanks
scott
 
"Excel 2002 VBA Programmers Reference", by John Green, Rob Bovey, Rom
Rosenfield, Stephen Bullen et al, is my personal recommendation, but you
might want to check out the books Debra Dalgleish lists at
http://www.contextures.on.ca/tiptech.html

--

HTH

Bob Phillips
... looking out across Poole Harbour to the Purbecks
(remove nothere from the email address if mailing direct)
 
Everyone has their own opinion. I will share mine. I believe the book
recommended by Bob is more appropriate if you have experience programming
already and just need to focus on Excel. For someone with little or no
programming experience, I would recommend John Walkenbach's book. I would
actually recommend getting both, but starting with Walkenbach's. For an
easier start (more tutorial), you might check out books by Reed Jacobson
(Excel version VBA Programming Step by Step) published by Microsoft press.
For Excel 2000, I believe they changed the title, but I think it is back to
Step by Step now.

Here is a sample chapter from an older version (still applicable to versions
of Excel after xl97)

http://www.microsoft.com/ExcelDev/Articles/sxs11pt1.htm
Lesson 11: Creating a Custom Form
Excerpted from Microsoft® Excel 97 Visual Basic® Step by Step.
 
I agree with Tom. The book by the big four is great if you already have
some experience and need some specific help. John's book is different,
because you can read it at several different levels, and it includes
guidance on how to think about setting things up, without diving
headfirst into the code. I use them both, as well as the Getz and
Gilbert VBA Programmers Handbook. Plus the help files.

- Jon
 
When I first started not too long ago, I was a graduate student in
Psychology and needed some help automating some of the features of
Excel to create an Employee Satisfaction Survey. I knew little about
VBA coding, where to put the code, how to get to the place to put the
code, etc. The books that helped me the most at that time were John
Walkenbach's Dummies Series book (can't remember the title, although I
think it was something like Excel Programming for Dummies, or Excel
Power Programming for Dummies). It was an excellent resource for me
and I recommend it to many of my friends who want to learn to do some
of what I do. Any of his dummies books would get you started--i.e.,
Excel 97 Programming would be helpful for the user of Excel 2000 or XP
when first getting started.

Also, the Newsgroup microsoft.public.excel.programming was SO VERY
HELPFUL when I wanted to do something beyond what I could get from the
book. In addition, the following websites are good because they often
have macros, etc., and other samples for download that will sometimes
let you see the code to see how to do various things:
www.cpearson.com
www.j-walk.com
www.bmsltd.co.uk

HTH,
Geoff
 
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