Customer Reviews:
 Bad reference, good intro December 8, 2007
Jas Bro (London)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the first book I read on the subject (I am proficient in other languages/platforms).
It is a decent introduction, and it gives you a good overview of various areas of Excel/VBA programming. There are plenty of code examples and lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty modifying and debugging them.
I was very disappointed by its poor structure and lack of rigour. Concepts are introduced by example in seemingly unrelated chapters, therefore scattering language features all over the place. This, combined with an utterly useless index, means that unless you get a digital copy of the book you will have a very hard time using this book as a reference.
Also, in my opinion, the author has not gone out much using other more sophisticated languages, and this lack of discipline/hacking attitude is often noticeable. Not only in the occasional sloppiness of his code (whoever proof-read this book did an awful job too by the way), but also in the poor explanation of higher features of VBA, for instance class modules, relegated to a 10-page chapter towards the end, whose examples are anyway missing the whole point of stateful encapsulation through class objects. Similarly poorly explained (many chapters earlier, incidentally) is the use of class objects for Application-level events, with the mysterious "With Events" qualifier which is never really explained anywhere.
I often found that the material lacked diagrams and more abstract and general explanations that go beyond the "learn by example" cookbook approach.
Finally, I was annoyed by the frequent, not-so-subliminal adverts to the author's software package, of which a trial is available on the CD.
Overall, it did the job for me - helping me getting to grips with the language and the object model. But if you are already beyond the basics get yourself a good reference, or perhaps Professional Excel Development: The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications Using Microsoft(R) Excel and VBA(R) (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series), which I have already started reading with interest and seems to explain much more methodically best practices and more advanced concepts - while still not a VBA reference.
 Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA October 25, 2007
Nino Chelidze (ID, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book was brand new as said in the description. Had a CD which was nice to find certain things in the book easier. The book itself though has very easy examples, so if you plan to do complicated programming, you might want to consider something else (if there is anything better available).
 More than just a VBA book October 17, 2007
J. Omohundro
When I opened this book up, I was surprised to find much more than just VBA programming. In fact, you don't get much "VBA-Anything" until about page 130. There's all sorts of tips and tricks in the earlier pages, along with some good background of how Excel was developed and how it's supposed to function--stuff that will be valuable the more you get into coding with VBA.
This is not a book for a person just getting into Excel. I've taken two college-level courses in Excel, and I've played with spreadsheets for a number of years previous to that, so I'm somewhat comfortable with them. If I wasn't, this book would overwhelm and intimidate. So if you haven't worked with spreadsheets much, I would suggest getting some experience in just working with one before you tackle VBA.
Fundamentals to Advanced Excel VBA - a great book October 9, 2007
Keith Sinders (Indianapolis, IN)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a great book. I've been programming in Excel VBA since about 1997. I've never had a formal class on writing Visual Basic or VBA code so I've always scratched through on my own flipping back and forth through Visual Basic books and searching through the index like crazy to find out what I needed. Programming in VBA started out as a hobby for me. Most books just state Visual Basic info and don't go into much detail. Walkenbach does a great job, especially for beginners that already have a little bit of experience with VBA. He starts out with the fundamentals and builds on them and gives plenty of example code. This helps give the reader a good grasp of how Excel's VBA environment truly works and it totally changed my perspective as far as how I program. Visual Basic books don't specifically target on Excel like this book does and VB is not necessarily exactly the same as VBA.
If you're just starting to learn VBA for Excel, then this book is worth every penny you pay and more. I have about 4 other books on VBA and I'd trade about all of them in for this one book. I definitely recommend reading about turning the automatic updating off and I think most beginners will find Chapter 11 regarding working with ranges EXTREMELY useful, especially the portion about transferring the data to a variant array for computation then back to the range for much faster macro speeds.
If you are starting out in Excel VBA, I definitely recommend this be the first book that you read.
Jelen & Walkenbach September 29, 2007
Ayman Mikhail (San Diego, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book plus Bill Jelen's "VBA and Macros for Microsoft Excel (Business Solutions)" makes for a complete volume on this subject. Walkenbach's book alone is not enough. Take it to the next level with Bullen/Bovey/Green's "Professional Excel Development."
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