Newbie: Need VBA & Excel references

[Arthur Schwarz]

I need some good references to VBA programming in Excel. The book I have is
good but tedious (and very large). In particular, I'd like a description of
the VBA language, the functions which are provided as part of VBA, the Excel
functions accessible by VBA (and how to access them), and features which I
need to know. The book I have is very tutorial and does not provide a
separate description of many of the above. I think that when I'm done
reading and ready to write, I'll have to find the things that I need to know
by re-reading the book (because the appendix doesn't include them).

I'm looking at the net (google) and I've found a lot of resources but it's
going to take time to weed them down to the useable. I will be looking at
Amazon and other on-line book resources to see what I can find but it's a
crapshoot. If I find a good looking title with a good table of contents, I
won't know what 'good' is until I buy the book.

Any guidance?

art

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

Use Help in the VBE, and the Object Browser. These are free and should
suffice after you have the basics - unless you do your reading in the loo.

There is also the Knowledge Base
http://support.microsoft.com

and MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com

John Green/Stephen Bullen's Excel 2002 Programmers Reference does have a
large reference section at the end and is not tutorial.

http://www.oaltd.co.uk/

 

[Spencer Hutton]

I started from scratch knowing nothing about macros and used John
Walkenbach's "Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA". worked great for me.

 

[Bob Phillips]

Art,

There are 3 stand-out books IMO

VBA For Dummies by John Walkenbach,
Power Programming With VBA by JW (again)
Excel VBA Programmer's Reference by John Green, Stephen Bullen & Rob Bovey
et al.

The first probably falls into the category of the book that you describe.
The second does not have the reference format AFAIK, the third does. But you
should check them out at the local bookstore to see which suits you best.

BTW, they will have an edition such as 2002, XP, 2003 in the title as well.
Avoid the Excel VBA Programmer's Reference 2003, go for the 2002 version as
I understand that the update has lost a lot.

--

HTH

RP
(remove nothere from the email address if mailing direct)