Writing Excel Macros: Automating Excel to Work for You - Softcover

Steven Roman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565925874 ISBN 13: 9781565925878

Publisher: O'Reilly, 1999

Synopsis

Microsoft Excel is an enormously powerful and flexible application. Yet despite its powerful feature set, there is a great deal that Excel either does not allow you to do or does not allow you to do easily through its user interface. And in spite of Excel's reputation as the most widely used spreadsheet application, the majority of its users do not venture beyond the basics of creating spreadsheets and perhaps dabbling with macros. Consequently, these users aren't getting all the power out of this formidable application.With Writing Excel Macros you will learn there are many things you can do at the programming level that you cannot do at the user-interface level, that is, with the menus and dialog boxes of Excel. And learning how to get more power out of Excel will mean you can be more effective in your work.Writing Excel Macros offers a solid introduction to writing VBA macros and programs and provides Excel users and programmers unfamiliar with the Excel object model with an excellent overview to writing VBA macros and programs. The essentials of the VBA language and the Excel object model are covered so that, when you have finished the book, you will know enough about Excel VBA to begin creating effective working programs.In particular, the book focuses on:

• Programming languages. Brief overview of programming and programming languages, as well as information on Variables, Data Types, and Constants, Functions and Subroutines, and more.
• The Visual Basic Editor. Before tackling the basics of the programming language that Excel uses, the reader is acquainted with the VBA environment--the Visual Basic Editor.
• Handling your code. An overview of where to store your code and how to activate it from an Excel spreadsheet.
• The Excel object model. An in-depth overview of the Excel object model, including the Application, Workbook, Worksheet, and Range objects.
• Appendices. Details on the Shape object; getting the Installed Printers; Command Bar Controls and Face IDs; programming Excel from another application; and more.

The information in this book is written in a succinct, practical manner that is characteristic of Steve Roman's straightforward approach. Readers will find useful examples throughout the book that deal with specific programming problems and allow them to gain hands-on experience in the VBA environment. Whether your interest in Excel programming is so you can be more effective in your work, or you want to learn how to write Excel programs for others to use, this book offers a solid introduction to writing VBA macros and programs and shows you how to get more power out of Excel at the programming level.

About this title

Review

Microsoft Excel can help you find solutions to all kinds of financial, scientific, engineering, and management problems. But most Excel users take advantage of only a small portion of Excel's flexibility. Writing Excel Macros explains how to use the customization features in Excel 97 and Excel 2000 to maximize their usefulness, even if you have no programming experience. Anyone with a bit of Excel familiarity will be able to follow this book.

Inside you'll find everything you need to know to write Excel macros. Readers find out, for example, how to make a dialog box appear that will prompt the user for a value and then insert that value into a key spreadsheet cell. Writing Excel Macros maintains its easy-to-follow style even as it gets into the Excel object model, which is how the program makes certain aspects of itself and its data files available for manipulation in macros. There are a lot of sample macros included too, and it's easy to copy them into your own documents (either by hand or by downloading them from the Web). --David Wall

Topics covered: Excel 97 and 2000 macros (and structure), using the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), values, variables, functions, loops, and conditional statements.

About the Author

Steven Roman, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the California State University, Fullerton. His previous books with O'Reilly include "Access Database Design and Programming", "Writing Excel Macros with VBA", and "Win32 API Programming with Visual Basic".

Edition details

• Publisher: O'Reilly
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1565925874
• ISBN 13: 9781565925878
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 554