Definitive Guide to Excel VBA
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List Price: $49.95 Amazon.com Price: $34.97 
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Product Details
- Media: Paperback
- Publisher: APress (November, 2000)
- ISBN: 1893115798
- Average Customer Review:
Based on 10 reviews.
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Amazon.com Sales Rank: 23,597
Customer Reviews
Not only the best Excel VBA book, but a reference for allCompared to Walkenbach books (like Excel 2002 / 2000 power programming with VBA) and many others, this book is truly worth its title. Its clear and very well structurated plan means all information can be found easily and everything understood without pain. This is paramount since a book main and unique goal is to transmit information. Its design and layout, clear, eye-pleasing and professional, strengthens this crucial aspect. With Walkenbach, the reader has to collect elements throughout all chapters them combine them to get an idea of a particular topic!!! With this book, the reader knows what he'll find and where. For example, all error handling is included in one part while all functions are sorted by theme (math, date etc.) It's incredible that having a coherent and clear organization, which should be basic, is not in Walkenbach books!?
Furthermore, this book reveals many important and little documented points tied to Excel VBA, ranging from range and cells to many critical points like external data access with true database programs, which are even not dealed in some self-proclamed 'expert' books, like Walkenbach's. Besides, it exhibits many trips and tricks that allow fast, clean programs and avoir many troubles by grouping all points linked to a particular problem.
Third, the writting is not terse: with irony, and a great amount of objectivity, qualities which seem to evaporate in Walkenbach and others (which very often sound like a Microsoft ad), it clearly explains and demonstrates the limits and bugs of Excel VBA.
Fourth, the companion CD Rom is truly useful, loaded with many pratical and real-life examples and solutions. Again, Walkenbach, after saying virtually every page the HE is the author, the creator and so forth, with its constant I-do-this mentality, provides a software wich is not usable since the reader has to send a coupon card!
Finally, this is the book to have for truly mastering Excel VBA, without pain but with efficiency.
An Afterthought
After looking through virtually every other book on VBA, only Kofler's book discusses the clipboard and clearly states the severe limitations of VBA in accessing it.
On pp. 208-211 Kofler describes the use of the clipboard from VBA. He points out that only the last item added to the clipboard is accessible, and how to do it. Later, pp. 762-765, Kofler introduces the programming of a new ActiveX server with VB that is used from within Excel. This approach extends clipboard access for large data sets, and requires setup using some executable VB subroutines on the supplied disk.
It's surprising that other books don't discuss such an important topic, even though Microsoft has made more than limited access to this feature unbearable.
I stick with my four-star rating.
One of the definitive guides to Excel VBA books
I won't say this book is "the only Excel VBA book you will need" -- there is no such kind of thing for programming books. However, I like to say it is one of the best and definitive guides to Excel VBA. The most important thing is that there are several advanced topics you won't find on the other popular Excel VBA books (such as Excel 2002 VBA programminer's Reference by Stephen Bullen, John Green et al. or Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA by John Walkenback): for instance, recursion, details of random numbers generation, matrix functions, automatic data reporting, OLAP functionality and using Excel as ActiveX server. However, I also must say this book is definitely not for the beginners to learn VBA.
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