Rating: 
Summary: A great book to help you get started with Excel programming.
Review: As an "intermediate" user of Excel, I needed a fairly easy to use book to help me get started with writing macros in Excel. This book fit my need very well. You will not by any means be an expert in Excel programming after you use this book, but you will definitely be able to write (not just record) macros with confidence as a result of this book. I recommend it highly as a first book for "beginner" to "intermediate" users of Excel who want to quickly begin writing their own macros.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as useful as I hoped
Review: Despite the high recommendations of some other users, this book is not as helpful as I wanted. Yes, it gives a good overview of VBA programming in Excel, but it is short on detailed, technical information - the type of information you need in order to actually write workable code. It spends very little time talking about manipulating data within Excel. This book often refers the reader to the online help. If I wanted to use the online help I would not have bought a book. It also expects you to use the macro recorder as a crutch until you learn enough to write code on your own. A good book if you want a high level overview of VBA, but probably not if you need to write lines of code.
Rating:
Summary: Good starting point
Review: Excel 97 Programming for Windows for Dummies is an excellent book for the Excel programming Novice. The book does a great job giving you a starting point that most VBA manuals and references do not. After becomming somewhat proficient writting macros the book doese not wear out it's usefulness as it can also be used as a somewhat clumbsy reference. The only shortfall in this book is that it doesn't provide reference more more excel commands that a user needs to make really useful macros (naming sheets, working with formulas, find functions, etc...). However, after mastering the material in this book and purchasing a VBA reference book there isn't any Excel challenge you can't overcome.
Rating:
Summary: Good starting point
Review: Excel 97 Programming for Windows for Dummies is an excellent book for the Excel programming Novice. The book does a great job giving you a starting point that most VBA manuals and references do not. After becomming somewhat proficient writting macros the book doese not wear out it's usefulness as it can also be used as a somewhat clumbsy reference. The only shortfall in this book is that it doesn't provide reference more more excel commands that a user needs to make really useful macros (naming sheets, working with formulas, find functions, etc...). However, after mastering the material in this book and purchasing a VBA reference book there isn't any Excel challenge you can't overcome.
Rating: 
Summary: Really gets you up and running...Fast!
Review: I have tried many a dull tome on this subject. Many such books certainly leave you with a sense of what VBA can do for OTHER people. This book gets VBA busy working for YOU in a hurry.As Einstein (no dummy) said: "If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough." John Walkenbach has the knowledge and guts to explain things simply and precisely.
Rating: 
Summary: Expected More
Review: I was disappointed with this book. I like programming books to give me code that I can try out. Other books have started out with a small project and built on it as the programming gets more complicated. Without projects I'm not getting a whole lot out of this book. It's set up more like a reference book, with some chapters being merely lists of properties and methods associated with the topic. This book covers a lot of topics and explains how to write the code. But it doens't really tell you how you can use it in an Excel application.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read on Excel VBA
Review: I've been juggling quite a few books on Excel VBA, but this one is different. I'm a beginner in Excel VBA, and am not interested in anything but tapping Excel VBA for engineering calculations. John Wilkenbach has done us a great service (may the others take a leaf out of his page).
Rating:
Summary: Never thought I'd love a 'dummies' book
Review: Ordinarily I don't think I'm enough of a dummy to want a for dummies book. However, with no programming experience and lots of fairly advanced knowledge of Excel, this book alone was enough to turn me loose on learning to program in VBA. I had previously figured out how to do some very minor editing on recorded macros, but that was pretty much it. On my very first project, the book gave me enough ideas and support to program a slick set of routines that ended up turning a 6-hours/day task into one that ran at the push of a button in 5 minutes. Maintainance of the reference lists I built to use with Do-Loops took another 10-15 minutes a day, mostly in communication with users of my output. When people at my company express an interest in learning to do the kind of thing I did, I point them to this title. Contrary to the reviewer who didn't want to use Excel's macro recorder as a crutch, I found this the fastest easiest way to discover the correct syntax for unfamiliar commands. This way I didn't have to tear my hair out figuring out the right way to say what I was trying to do - unlike the Access VBA utilities I later moved on to.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book For Beginning Excel Programers
Review: This book gave me the ability to write a macro to streamline a task at work (about three pages of code). What once took 15 to 20 minutes to do, now takes about 5 minutes tops. And that was after only reading about two thirds of the book. I can't wait to read the last third! If you know nothing about VBA, this is the book to get. It is very easy to understand and grasp the basics. The only down side is that I would have liked to have seen more varied example "themes" instead of using the same theme over and over again. Case in point, how to get Excel to recognize which workbook is active, and then do a different task depending upon the workbook that is active. It took me several hours to figure that one out, and no real examples in the book. It short, give an example and then show several different things that can be done with it, instead of giving just one example and then building on that. All in all, however, a MUST READ book!
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book For Beginning Excel Programers
Review: This book gave me the ability to write a macro to streamline a task at work (about three pages of code). What once took 15 to 20 minutes to do, now takes about 5 minutes tops. And that was after only reading about two thirds of the book. I can't wait to read the last third! If you know nothing about VBA, this is the book to get. It is very easy to understand and grasp the basics. The only down side is that I would have liked to have seen more varied example "themes" instead of using the same theme over and over again. Case in point, how to get Excel to recognize which workbook is active, and then do a different task depending upon the workbook that is active. It took me several hours to figure that one out, and no real examples in the book. It short, give an example and then show several different things that can be done with it, instead of giving just one example and then building on that. All in all, however, a MUST READ book!
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