Advice for picking up Excel programming...

[proxy_cypher]

Hello everyone.

I'm new to these forums and I am very excited I found these forums.

I've been given a new task at our company that involves using Excel. In a nutshell, I need to learn Excel pretty fast and that includes Excel and programming excel.
I was hoping to ask a few questions here as well as clear up a few things here. Here we go.

1.) When referring to "Programming in Excel", does that mean using VB in Excel? Wanted to clear that up.

2.) VB vs. VBA. VB is Visual Basic. VBA is Visual Basic Application? Big difference between the two?

Ok. Now, I was hoping for some recommended books to help me get started on Excel programming. I have purchased a few Excel books to help me get started. They include:

Excel: The Missing Manual
Excel 2003: Inside and Out: Special Edition (Que Publishing)
Excel Pocket Guide

I have used Excel before so I am not completely new to it.

Does anyone recommend books to help me get started with?

A few a found are:

Excel VBA for Dummies

Here is a list at Amazon:

List of Excel VBA books

That should be it for now.

I'm super excited on this project. I have always known that if you could master Excel, you were in good shape.

I look forward to hearing replies.

GOod to be aboard

Cheers,

PC

[dominicb]

Good evening PC and welcome

(1) Programming in eExcel does indeed refer to using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), yes. It is a pretty powerful langage and once you get proffiecent full applications can be built with it.

(2) VB is the same as VBA (at least in these and other Excel based pages - Microsoft also market VB.Net - a more powerful standalone version). VBE is the environment (ie., alt + F11)

The only book I have is Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA (very good) and I would recommend these websites for picking up hints and tips (in no particular order).

http://www.cpearson.com/
http://j-walk.com/ss/
http://www.contextures.com/

HTH

Good luck!

DominicB

[proxy_cypher]

Thanks dominicb for the help and clarifying programming in excel. I do appreciate it.

Here are a few more books I saw at my local book store that looked pretty good. Anyone comment on these?

Excel VBA for Dummies

Excel Power Programming

This one looked very very good:

VBA and Macros for Excel


Weekend Crash Course

Walkenbach seems like a pretty good author for Excel and Programming excel.

Here are two more:

Walkenbach

Excel 2003 Forumals

Probably getting carried away here, but thought i'd list.

[dominicb]

Hi PC

I suppose it all depends exactly what you want to do (and who's paying - if it's your employer buy them all!!!!!).

I have the Excel Power Programming book which is an absolute must for advanced stuff - it contains examples on a CD-Rom and tips you probably wouldn't find anywhere else and John Walkenbach is a good author and explains concepts well. If you're inexperienced in developing macros you might want to start with the VBA for Dummies (also by JW, and as he says on his website, you don't have to be a dummy...). Although these two books will probably overlap somewhere in the middle.

Only go for the Excel Formulas book if you need to know how to put together mega formulae - the really advanced stuff because this is what this book will be about (again by JW). But he does seem to be one of the leading writers of Excel textbooks - and he only writes about Excel, so he does specialise.

Also if you buy a book by JW most of them seem to have a coupon to buy his add-in PUPv6 for $5 (usually $40).

HTH

DominicB