Rating: 
Summary: Good for beginners and intermediate alike
Review: As someone who has some programming experience, this book was very helpful to me.
The project I am working on was already defined, and all I had to do was look in the books where an example was given or a syntax reference existed. Note that I used it in alongside O'Reilly Press' 'Writing Excel Macros with VBA'. Where certain areas aren't covered in this book (rare), there will almost ceratinly be something in the other.As an intermediate level part-time but somewhat rusty programmer (mostly self-taught) of Java, C, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, Assembly and others, this book certainly had what I was looking for.
It offers useful language references and the descriptions are ample, although occasionally apparently useful methods that were covered in 'the other' book and were overlooked in this one; it's just not possible to include everything though, even in ~1000 pages. It assumes some prior knowledge of programming techniques, and is therefore not for the absolute beginner, but will serve it's purpose very well indeed to the majority. I would recommend this book all except the absolute beginner and the advanced programmer/expert (who probably wouldn't be reading this anyway!). Definatly worth the money. I rarely buy books on the internet without having a good flick through them at the local bookshop first. In this case I would definatly advise likeminded thinkers to make an exception. The included CDROM is worth it's weight in gold and is all too often a crucial ommission by authours/publishers. I can now take the book with me on my laptop in PDF format (hooray!) and all of the book examples are included too. BONUS!
Rating: 
Summary: Salesmanship!
Review: Buy this book only if you don't mind going through relentlessly blatant salesmanship throughout the whole book. The code of the author's supposedly state-of-art application is not available. But don't feel sorry about that, 'cuz it's not that impressive. In fact, with a little patience, you could develop your own cutting-edge applications.
Rating: 
Summary: Very light in content. Cannot do much after reading it
Review: First of all, I am non-English speaker (forgive my English). I am an Electrical Engineer, not a programmer. But I have many years programming experiences in different languages (on my own!). I have finished up to chapter 10. The contents are very light. It talks about very basic syntax that are almost the same in any language (e.g. C, Java, Perl C++...) It puts hundreds of pages that can be done in a half of the volumn. It does not tell you much about the object details. It seems to tell you to explore the objects and methods by recording macro and learning by trial and error. If so, I don't need this book. First of all, time is money. I spent money, time to read hundreds of pages. The author suggests you to trial and error. I really don't think it is a very good book. But I still give 3 stars (I am quite geneous!) Maybe most audiences of this book are never program in his/her life. This may be good for them. For someone who has experiences in programming. It is not very useful. The author should really concentrate on objects and methods after some basic syntaxs. That is the most important. I can learn the syntax in few days. But I don't know much about all the objects and methods. Without knowing the objects and methods, nobody can do much. Just like learning English, you know all the Syntax but you don't know any WORDS and USAGE. What do you think you can write!
Rating:
Summary: Many hype, tons of useless elements, total lack of structure
Review: For sure, this book has a really really exciting title, with words like power, vba and programming. After reading the book, the reader can answer the question the author has: "why I wrote this book?". To glorify him obviously, since they're virtually everywhere I-do-this, I-do-that, I-show-you-this-and-that. The reader knows perferctly that this book has been written by the author (like any book!), so there's no need for this perpetual I-do-this things. Besides, the only element that matters is not the author bur the book itself. If you can stand this self-promotion, then the worst is yet to come. This book has no real structure, making its use and finding information a true headache. The summary is a clear proof: part 1) some essential background, 2)excel application development, 3) VBA, 4) userforms, 5) advanced techniques, 6) developing applications, 7) others. Since part 2 is devoted to devlopping, why this subject should again comes in part 6? Besides, isn't the whole book dedicated to developing? Finding what you want, even in the detailed contents, is harsh and shows that there's no plan, but rather disseaminated pieces of information, just like the VBA help. Instead of clearly dividing by general topic (variables, objects, methods...), the author has a special order where everything seems mixed and spread in the book. Here something about methods, then some chapters later, another thing about methods etc. And the author, instead of devolping and insiting on crucial themes, like accessing and working with external data (e.g. Access), contents itself with a short paragraph saying: please refer to other books! However, this book devotes around 100 pages to worthless history (starting with VisiCalc in 1978!!!) and the like. Incredible! That some historical material exist, why not. But that this comes while the essential is not here, that's inadmissible. That's why what this product is supposed to give begins only at page 120. Besides, the layout (font, colors...) makes this book very unpleasant to read, so you want to close it ASAP, which is not exactly a good point. The 3-star ranking reflects the amount of data provided, and some good points. If you want a true and efficient book on Excel VBA, go for Definitve guide to Excel VBA which is really worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: Great new book for 2002
Review: Hello Excel users I have the book for 2000 also and I have purchased this one also because it is the one of the best book around about Excel VBA. All the things in it are written in a way that people like me, a hobbyist with no study in computer stuff easily can learn everything about Excel VBA. Look also for 2002 Formulas than you have it all for Excel 2002 Thanks for making it John Regards Ron
Rating:
Summary: Great book--highly recommended
Review: I am a real estate finance analyst and researcher who wanted more control over the manipulation of my data in Excel as well as learning how to create user forms. John Walkenbach's "Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA" was an informative and excellent resource that taught me most of what I was looking for. Walkenbach begins with a brief explanation of Excel and the fundamentals of object-oriented programming (OOP), which underpins VBA. The reader has to be patient and be willing to experiment; working through Walkenbach's examples with Excel open is almost a must. There are several issues that I would like to point out. One reviewer was upset over the fact that Walkenbach did not offer some utilities from the book's CDs for free. I did not try any of the utilities because I was more interested in the book's actual contents and explanations. Walkenbach does, however, offer the reader a full and unrestricted PDF version of the book in the CD, which I think is mighty generous of him. Instead of lugging the +1,000 page book, I sometimes leave the PDF version on my laptop so I could always have it with me. Lastly, I use Excel 97 at work and Excel X on the Mac at home, and despite some minor incompatibility issues, I would say that the book for the most part could be used for all versions of Excel 97 and up. BTW, I would also recommend "Excel 2002 VBA" by Bullen, Green, Bovey, and Rosenberg published by Worx Press for a more advanced treatment of VBA.
Rating:
Summary: Great book--highly recommended
Review: I am a real estate finance analyst and researcher who wanted more control over the manipulation of my data in Excel as well as learning how to create user forms. John Walkenbach's "Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA" was an informative and excellent resource that taught me most of what I was looking for. Walkenbach begins with a brief explanation of Excel and the fundamentals of object-oriented programming (OOP), which underpins VBA. The reader has to be patient and be willing to experiment; working through Walkenbach's examples with Excel open is almost a must. There are several issues that I would like to point out. One reviewer was upset over the fact that Walkenbach did not offer some utilities from the book's CDs for free. I did not try any of the utilities because I was more interested in the book's actual contents and explanations. Walkenbach does, however, offer the reader a full and unrestricted PDF version of the book in the CD, which I think is mighty generous of him. Instead of lugging the +1,000 page book, I sometimes leave the PDF version on my laptop so I could always have it with me. Lastly, I use Excel 97 at work and Excel X on the Mac at home, and despite some minor incompatibility issues, I would say that the book for the most part could be used for all versions of Excel 97 and up. BTW, I would also recommend "Excel 2002 VBA" by Bullen, Green, Bovey, and Rosenberg published by Worx Press for a more advanced treatment of VBA.
Rating:
Summary: Useful, but some stuff didn't work as explained
Review: I found this book very useful. However, I found it frustrating that some things didn't work exactly as explained or required perhaps some significant extra code to really work well. I am by far and away not an expert, but also not a novice; I've been programming in BASIC, VB, FORTRAN, UNIX SHELL, etc. for 30 years, but only as a tool for my job. I would recommend this book, but not for beginners who probably wouldn't deduce their way to solve things.
Rating:
Summary: A great book on VBA
Review: I got this book and the author's other on Formulas. Although I am only using Excel 2000, I got it because I would be using Excel 2002 in the future. With no experience in VBA for MS apps, I needed something to get me up and running with writing macros from scratch. Familiar with VB6 I figure I can pick VBA up easily. I had a book on VBA from SAMS teach yourself series some years back, which I found dry and useless. I had thrown it away so I got this book. I was up and running in about two hours writing macros that would look down a column of data and find the last non-empty cell in a range that had empty cells between data cells. I also wrote macros to update a summary at the top of the worksheet depending on how much data was in a particular row and to advance to the next empty cell in a row after data was entered, assisting the user in entering/selecting data. Excellent and easy to understand. The real meat doesn't start until Chapter 7 when VBA is introduced. Prior to that is a refresher on formulas and Excel itself. I'm results oriented so I skimmed up to Chapter 7 before looking for answers to my problem. I am only in Chapter 9, before userforms, which is overkill for my needs at work but I will begin tinkering since it'll be done on my own time. Highly recommended for those who need a good solid intro to VBA. If you know VB, it'll be cake walk. For those who don't, there are plenty of examples to help you out and remember to understand the Excel object model. You should be all set if you at least try some of the examples instead of staring at the print. The only thing I think is missing is a listing of the methods and properties of the Excel object model. For that, I have "Excel 2002 VBA" by Wrox. Funny how I've only used that book for its listing in its appendix, which is several hundred pages long and easily worth the price of that book. But that's another review...
Rating: 
Summary: Well organized, clear writing; good investment
Review: I have found this book very useful. It is not for raw beginners, you should have at least dabbled in Visual Basic. The author gently encourages the reader to develop habits of documentation, formatting code with indents etc. He provides helpful overviews of objects, properties, methods. There are many examples, most are snippets to illustrate key points. Well organized, attractive page layouts, good index. CD with VBA examples (and more) adds much value.
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