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Rating: 
Summary: Better Automation
Review: A good book for combine two powerfuls application like vfp and office
Rating:
Summary: A Model For Others
Review: After 28+ years in this business I have finally stumbled upon an author who knows how to write technical books. This one should be a "how to write" example for other alleged authors.The book, is clear, concise, and well designed. No assumptions are made; yet it is structured in a manner that one can easily skip over items of familiarity. It is an ideal book in that it spans the needs of users at all levels of expertise and is loaded with real "meat and potatoes" practicality and minimal blue sky theory. No matter what your level of expertise (or the lack of it), you can be creating quality applications within the first hour! My hat is off to these writers and editors!
Rating:
Summary: A Model For Others
Review: After 28+ years in this business I have finally stumbled upon an author who knows how to write technical books. This one should be a "how to write" example for other alleged authors. The book, is clear, concise, and well designed. No assumptions are made; yet it is structured in a manner that one can easily skip over items of familiarity. It is an ideal book in that it spans the needs of users at all levels of expertise and is loaded with real "meat and potatoes" practicality and minimal blue sky theory. No matter what your level of expertise (or the lack of it), you can be creating quality applications within the first hour! My hat is off to these writers and editors!
Rating:
Summary: A Model For Others
Review: After 28+ years in this business I have finally stumbled upon an author who knows how to write technical books. This one should be a "how to write" example for other alleged authors. The book, is clear, concise, and well designed. No assumptions are made; yet it is structured in a manner that one can easily skip over items of familiarity. It is an ideal book in that it spans the needs of users at all levels of expertise and is loaded with real "meat and potatoes" practicality and minimal blue sky theory. No matter what your level of expertise (or the lack of it), you can be creating quality applications within the first hour! My hat is off to these writers and editors!
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Easy
Review: Prior to this book, I had been dreading my foray into automation. Literally, within minutes of opening the book, I was automating Excel. And within a couple of hours, I had already built my first automation component for an application. These guys make it so easy! Every book and article I have ever read by Granor and Martin has been superb, and this book is no exception.
Rating:
Summary: All 'how-to' books should be this good
Review: This may be one of the best 'how-to' development books on the planet. Generating complex Office output from any development language (be it VFP, VB, etc.) can be a daunting task. The first time you try it on your own, invariably you hit a wall and think to yourself, 'how do I do this, how do I get around that, etc.' Tamar and Della do an incredible job of covering the details. I recently finished a project where I had to generate some of the most complicated formats in MS Word that I've ever seen. (Anyone who is 'new' to Fox should also check out Tamar's "Hacker's Guide to VFP", another strong title). 99% of the time, if I did a search through the PDF version of the book, I came across a meaningful code sample that helped me out...or at least pointed me in the right direction. This book could have sold for three times the price and I'd still feel the same way about it. Even 5 stars doesn't do this book the proper justice. It has an almost endless supply of tips and techniques. The examples cover so much of Office Automation that the book is a 'de facto' reference manual as well. I've been in the business since 1988, and average about 8-10 book purchases a year. Along with Allen Holub's compiler books and Ken Henderson's 'Guru Guide to SQL Server', I'd rate this as one of the best technical 'how-to' books I've ever seen. I wish someone would write a good .NET applications book along the lines of this book. The difference between a valuable reference book like this one, and a good % of the junk that's been published on .NET, can only be measured in conceptual light years.
Rating:
Summary: All 'how-to' books should be this good
Review: This may be one of the best 'how-to' development books on the planet. Generating complex Office output from any development language (be it VFP, VB, etc.) can be a daunting task. The first time you try it on your own, invariably you hit a wall and think to yourself, 'how do I do this, how do I get around that, etc.' Tamar and Della do an incredible job of covering the details. I recently finished a project where I had to generate some of the most complicated formats in MS Word that I've ever seen. (Anyone who is 'new' to Fox should also check out Tamar's "Hacker's Guide to VFP", another strong title). 99% of the time, if I did a search through the PDF version of the book, I came across a meaningful code sample that helped me out...or at least pointed me in the right direction. This book could have sold for three times the price and I'd still feel the same way about it. Even 5 stars doesn't do this book the proper justice. It has an almost endless supply of tips and techniques. The examples cover so much of Office Automation that the book is a 'de facto' reference manual as well. I've been in the business since 1988, and average about 8-10 book purchases a year. Along with Allen Holub's compiler books and Ken Henderson's 'Guru Guide to SQL Server', I'd rate this as one of the best technical 'how-to' books I've ever seen. I wish someone would write a good .NET applications book along the lines of this book. The difference between a valuable reference book like this one, and a good % of the junk that's been published on .NET, can only be measured in conceptual light years.
Rating: 
Summary: Not just for FoxPro, but any language!
Review: When Tamar Granor approached me with the idea for this book, I knew I had to write it. I've been looking for a good book on automating MS Office for years, and I haven't found anything. While the book is geared towards FoxPro, if you are fluent in another language, don't despair! The vast majority of the book is centered on the properties and methods of the Office servers, so it translates quite easily into any language. We've tried to structure the examples so that the Automation is the focus; not features of the VFP language. Tamar and I have a wealth of experience in the Automation environment. I have spent most of the last 5 years developing a mission-critical briefing and analysis system for military logistics. It is currently in use world-wide by the US Military. The output of this system is either Word documents with embedded Excel charts and tables, or PowerPoint presentations with slides containing Excel charts, fed from live data, and a choice of over 100 combinations of extremely customized formatting options. The reader of this book benefits in a number of ways from this experience. First, the reader has a single source for the Office servers (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) which does more than just list the properties and methods. We describe how to use the feature (and sometimes, how NOT to use it), then give real examples adapted from code that has been tested in production systems. And you'll be able to download a CHM file with the complete text of the book -- it's a breeze to lookup a concept, then paste the example into your code! If you've been thinking that Automation is difficult, or putting it off because it's too detailed, this book is for you. Even if you've been working with Automation for some time, you'll find this a very handy reference guide. And for those of you that aren't fluent in FoxPro, I'm certain that you'll appreciate the in-depth coverage of the Office object models and how to put them to use.
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