A Good VBA book for beginners

[Chris Holder]

I am a varsity student that has Pascal 101, and C++ 101
behind me. Is there a good book that covers VBA from
scratch. Not "a do it youself in 24 hour book".

 

[Larry Linson]

In what software do you intend to use VBA? It is applicable to most of the
Microsoft office applications -- Access, Word, Excel... and even other
vendors' software -- but in each case, you have to accomodate the object
model of the software in which it resides. That is, to use VBA effectively,
you have to be familiar with how to do things in the software in which it
resides, because much of what you do is to manipulate that host software via
its object model.

For Access, for someone who knows Access itself at the accomplished user
level and wants to move up to VBA, I like Dr. Rick Dobson's "Programming
Microsoft Access 2000" or "Programming Microsoft Access 2002", both
published by Microsoft Press. He has a website, mostly about his books, at
http://www.programmingmsaccess.com/. Other books are published by Sybex and
Sams, but I have not reviewed the current editions of those to offer
comment.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Tim Ferguson]

I am a varsity student that has Pascal 101, and C++ 101
behind me. Is there a good book that covers VBA from
scratch. Not "a do it youself in 24 hour book".

As someone who already understands programming concepts, and in particular
object-oriented/ event-driven principles, you will be able to pick up
nearly every thing you need in VBA in an afternoon and still have time for
tea. Get one of the 24-hour books and go through it in two. There is an
advanced layer that comes slowly as and when you need it -- like using
Interfaces and instancing techniques and so on -- but most of us mortals
manage quite happily with little grasp of it.

You will get the specifics of using particular COM objects by using them:
Excel, Access, Word, CorelDraw! etc all have their own object models and
you just have to refer to help files or buy big "Mastering Microsoft blah-
blah" references.

The other big chunk of knowledge you need to accrue along the way is
interaction with the Windows API. There are, again, some very good books on
this, again to be used as references rather than bedtime reading. Try
Amazon.

Best of luck

Tim F