Office vX - Excel - Visual Basic

[Martin Beir]

I have recently purchased Office vX for Macintosh.

Microsoft no longer ship manuals with the program discs.

I have some past experience of creating applications using VBA with Excel 5
on a Mac platform but I see from browsing the program that there have been
many changes including the introduction of Userforms and Class modules.

My searches for a training manual specific to VBA-Excel vX have been
unsuccessful. There is a book titled "Excel 2002 Visual Basic® for
Applications Step by Step". Would some kind person, please advise me whether
this book is likely to prove useful. Is Excel 2002 Visual Basic the same or
similar to the VBA packaged as part of Office vX?

Before posting this message I did telephone Microsoft but found them to be
somewhat less than helpful.

Thanking you all in anticipation.

Martin Beir

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

My searches for a training manual specific to VBA-Excel vX have been
unsuccessful. There is a book titled "Excel 2002 Visual Basic® for
Applications Step by Step". Would some kind person, please advise me whether
this book is likely to prove useful. Is Excel 2002 Visual Basic the same or
similar to the VBA packaged as part of Office vX?

In general, the VBA6 in XL2002 is 90% compatible with Mac VBA5. (Of
course, ActiveX doesn't work at all on Macs, but that was true of
VBA5/Win as well).

The Step-by-step book has gotten some good reviews, but I don't like
it as much as these two:

"Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA" by John Walkenbach
"Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's Reference" by Bovey, Bullen, Green and
Rosenberg

It's mostly a matter of style. For me, BBG&R is what I use when I
want a technical specification, and John W's book is what I read to
understand technique.

Make sure you look at "Differences between Excel VBA for Windows and
Excel VBA for the Macintosh" in Help.

Several handy functions were added to VBA6, including Replace(),
Join(), Split(), and InStrRev(). You can find VBA5 workarounds
(though they're not necessarily optimized) at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;188007

 

[Martin Beir]

To J.E.McGimpsey.

Many thanks for your advice.
I have bought the books you recommended and am pleased to find that not only
are they very comprehensive but also the information is presented in a way
that amateurs like me can understand.

Regards, Martin Beir

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

Many thanks for your advice.
I have bought the books you recommended and am pleased to find that not only
are they very comprehensive but also the information is presented in a way
that amateurs like me can understand.

Not only that, but the authors are all really nice guys.