Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Excel and VBA Book for all Levels
Review: The author provided many real world examples. I came to the table with only Excel spreadsheet knowledge. I am now a true VBA power programmer. I've emailed the author when I've had questions, and he has been *very* quick to respond. A MUST HAVE.
Rating: 
Summary: Complete VBA reference
Review: This is absolutely a great book for intermediate to advanced users. I've founded useful tips in each and every chapter. The companion CD-Rom is also very helpful. If you're a little more curious than average, try the BONUS Example Files in the CD-Rom. You'll find examples even of recursive routines in VBA!The only thing to say is that I expected a little more information on Pivot Tables, particularly with Analysis Services cubes.
Rating:
Summary: With this book you don't need anymore...
Review: After all the previous comments I just can say you should have this book. I am sure that if you spent your money in other books you will realise all what they didn't teach you!
Rating:
Summary: The Best One Out There
Review: If you plan on writing Excel applications or macros, the first thing to do is get this book. After floundering in the wilderness for a month or two while trying to write a heavy-duty Excel application, I finally invested in this book, and it paid off in a hurry. Not all of my questions were answered, but most of them were. And for those that weren't, the book taught me how to go about finding the answers. My original idea was to build a worksheet with macros, and then pass that worksheet on to others. But this book showed me that this approach will lead to nothing but headaches. What you need to do is build an Excel Add-in. That way you can isolate and protect the code, rather than having it duplicated in every worksheet. Plus, if you plan on using your own menus and toolbars, an Add-in saves you the hassle of trying to manage them and their registries on different machines. But besides Add-ins, this book does an outstanding job of teaching what everyone wants to know: how to create dialogue boxes, extract values from worksheets, perform calculations on them, and transfer the results back into the worksheet via tables or graphs. Nice job, John!
Rating:
Summary: Essential Resource Guide - A Must Have Developers Resource
Review: Excellent sequel to Excel 5. John takes us through the more adveanced features of Excel as a development tool for the user interface. Excel is a tool that has become common place in the work place. Users are comfortable with the Excel interface. Developing user interfaces that resemble Excel helps in early acceptance of the application. I have used both Excel 5 and Excel 2000 Power Programming to assist me in devloping those end user tools. Intermediate readers should not be scared to use this book to help them enhance and learn the full features of Excel. The spreadsheet tool has come a long way since VisiCalc. John, presents certain aspects of Excel that are unavailable anywhere else in an easy to understand format.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't quite live up to its title ...
Review: You have to wonder when the author states in the preface ..."I spent more time developing the examples on the CD_ROM than I did writing chapters" ... and it shows. Information seems to be somewhat scattered. In an 850 page book on "power programming with VBA", it takes more than 100 pages before the author really gets into VBA.
The author recommends using comments in code, but many examples lack sufficient comments which would greatly aid the reader. The author also recommends using OPTION EXPLICIT (which requires the user to declare variable types), but variables are undefined in many examples which makes the examples more difficult to understand. The author does not recommend (and does not use) prefixes on variable names to identify types. This variable naming convention, which is widely used, would also make his examples more understandable.
In my opinion, several chapters appear out of place. The chapter on reading/writing text files, which appears at the end of the book, should be covered much earlier. The chapter on class modules is the second last chapter even though the author uses class modules in the examples in at least 4 previous chapters. The author states that "complete coverage" of class modules is beyond the scope of the book, but fails to explain some concepts used in the class modules in the prior chapters.
The Power Utility Pak included on the CD-ROM is a demo version for Excel 97 with many features non-operational. The book does includes a coupon for a FREE copy of Power Pak 2000 ... but it will cost you S&H.
Although the book has relatively few errors, the errors I have detected and submitted to the author have apparently "fallen on deaf ears" and have not been published on the author's website for the benefit of other readers.
I think the author should have spent more time making the content of the book match the title of the book. The majority of the book deals with Excel 97 material. Very little information in this book is specific to Excel 2000. In my opinion the book should be rated for a reader level of "Beginner to Intermediate" rather than "Intermediate to Advanced". At least 100 pages of "boiler plate stuff" should be eliminated and replaced with "advanced stuff".
NEVERTHELESS, despite all my criticisms ... Good Excel books at the intermediate/advanced level are hard to find. Readers can obtain valuable information by reading the text and carefully following the author's examples in both the book and on the CD-ROM.
Rating:
Summary: Better Than Most
Review: A good programmer's guide should review all of the standard tools, and then delve into the powerful but neglected features. This is what Walkenbachs books have usually achieved. Towards the back of the book he discusses advanced techniques for designing add-ins and customizing the application to make it look like your own. He covers toolbars, menus, and events in depth. But if you're developing in conjunction with even simple databases, then you'll need a backup reference. I would have appreciated a discussion of the limits of Excel development, problems that can afflict complicated Excel projects, and suggestions about dealing with many of the known bugs that Microsoft has been slow to address. The O'Reilly books are as good or better; but this is still worth it. The CD has a couple things that that are useful too.
Rating:
Summary: its good one
Review: I hope i will find information what i want .
Rating:
Summary: The light went off 100 times in the first 50 pages
Review: Some people have the knack of taking a complicated or confusing subject and developing it in such a way that it just makes sense. This book is an easy read and excellent reference. I bought it because of the reviews of others and was not disappointed. In fact I also bought Excel 2000 Formulas by the same author and it is excellent as well. Great job!
Rating:
Summary: Walkenbach the Best on Excel
Review: Mr. Walkenbach's books on Excel continue to be the best out there. This one in particular was extremely useful in identifying specific ideosychracies with Excel 2000. From the insights in this book alone (as well as with some help from an Excel usenet group - which Mr. Walkenbach also participates in) I have been able to create some very powerful Excel add-ins that I have used for corporate clients in the area of financial forecasting, simulation, optimization, and reporting.
| 
