Excel 2000 VBA: Programmers Reference (Paperback)

I'm not sure if some of the people reviewing this book were supposed to be reading John Green's "Excel 2000 VBA : Programmers Reference" in the first place. If you have never used Excel, or never written your own script or program before, THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU. This book was written for those who are either knowledgeable in Excel, wishing to learn programming, or vice versa, and its BY FAR THE BEST way to get there.

To give this book anything less than four stars (and I personally give it five) shows a complete lack of basic Excel and/or programming comprehension.

Excel 2000 VBA: Programmer's Reference starts with the basic concepts of functions (Subs), variables, loops, if statements, etc. But just like any other book from any other programming languange, don't expect to be fluent after reading the first 2 chapters.

Take time each day to read as much as you can, and run the examples in the VB editor. I have done 90% of the examples in the book, adapting many of them for my own use. Studying this text cover to cover is the best way to read it, as it is structured much like any college math course, where each chapter builds upon the chapter that precedes it. So avoid reading this book like an encyclopædia, as it will leave holes in your knowledge of the Excel Object Model.

The in-depth explanations of advanced concepts such as dynamic arrays, object referencing, names, API calls, and many more untapped resources of Excel are what make this book head and shoulders above the rest.

The index can be problematic for those not experienced in Object-Oriented programming, as it is organized by object types, and not alphabetically by each object. This thinking follows much more along that of a native programmer, so to proggers goes the advantage, but at the same time, press F2 within the Excel VBA editor, and you can read definitions for any object alphabetically. I believe John Green organized the index as it is intentionally, knowing that those not familiar with Excel could fall back on the Object reference in the VBA editor (via F2 on keyboard).

I think it is a shame that this book received several bads reviews, because in reading their posts, it seemed that not one of them should have been reading this book in the first place. It is a "Programmer Reference" as the name suggests. To those who didn't understand the most basic programming concepts and still decided to purchase the book, that is simply your fault for not reading the title, and is not the fault of John Green, whose masterpiece is a credit to the programming world at large, and another triumph WRT Excel.

Bravo, John... Bravo...

I had VBA experience with Access but very little with Excel. Within 1 month of utilizing this book, I was able to to show my employer that I deserved the new consultation job at a major pharmaceutical company and got it.

While the index is very poor, this is an excellent REFERENCE book, even for beginners and those working with Excel 97. Most of what is in the book applies to '97 as well. The price, like most WROX books, is also very reasonable, especially for the content. You will need an Internet Service Provider to download the code examples in the earlier parts of the book though, another reason it only gets 4 stars. I don't agree, especially since anyone can buy a burnable CD for less than .25 now, with the philosophy that it substantially adds to the cost. Given most book publishers inclusion of a CD, I would think WROX would augment the quality of their publications by including the CD of source code/information for a nominal increased price. The costs involved are extremely reasonable to the business standards of their industry.