|  | Authors: Rob Bovey, Dennis Wallentin, Stephen Bullen, John Green
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
List Price: $59.99
Buy New: $33.76
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New (34) Used (11) from $32.75
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Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 15378
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Pages: 1176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 7.1 x 2.5
ISBN: 0321508793
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.54
EAN: 9780321508799
ASIN: 0321508793
Publication Date: May 16, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 32
Perfect guide for the Excel (and all VBA apps) developer March 29, 2005
Juan Pablo Gonzalez (Marion, IL United States)
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
Being a full time Excel consultant and developer I have heard many times the same thing that the authors put in the introduction: "Excel as a development tool ? that's not for serious use...".
However, this book is the way to prove them wrong. They show the reader how to turn your Excel-based applications into a professional one, without having to sacrifice all the good things that you have when you code in Excel (and other VBA enabled applications).
A must-have book for the serious MS Excel developer March 27, 2005
Tushar Mehta (www.tushar-mehta.com)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
A disclosure: I know the authors professionally and consider them if not friends then at least professional colleagues. That said...
This is a must have book for not only the advanced and professional developer but also the advanced beginner or intermediate developer who wants to know what s/he should aspire to. The authors discuss a wide range of very useful development techniques that one can leverage to build 'industrial strength' solutions using not only MS Excel but also other Office products.
As the authors themselves indicate, the book has a lot to offer the experienced developer. Not many books on this subject can make me go, "Umm...that's interesting." This did. Several times. The breadth and depth of their expertise is apparent throughout the book as they discuss topics ranging from worksheet design to user interface design to charting to debugging techniques to the use of 'external' programming languages.
Even those who may disagree with some of the recommendations about 'best practices' will find most disagreements to be of style and degree rather than substance.
Advanced beginners or intermediate level developers serious about improving their skills will also benefit from this book since many chapters recommend 'best practices' - general rules, design of worksheets, command bars, and user forms, error handling, etc.
As another reviewer noted some of the chapters come across as an overview to more niche development environments. The authors do a very good job of building bridges between Excel and those advanced technologies - examples being XLLs and COM Add-ins. While fully understandable why they cannot address all those technologies in detail, it does leave the reader interested in those niches hungry for more.
Two quibbles: First, I was disappointed that the authors did not address worksheet range selections in a user form. Given the otherwise thorough nature of the book, this was a startling oversight of an important topic.
Second, some of the chapters contain material that the advanced developer ought to know - ironically making the book more valuable to the advanced beginner or intermediate developer. For example, the chapters on data manipulation, charting, and VBA debugging made me go, "Huh? Why is this here?" While very good in its own right, such material seemed out of place in a book of this caliber.
Overall, anyone who develops or wants to develop software for 'heavy duty' and practical use in the MS Excel and Office environment should have this not just on their bookshelf but within easy reach.
Great tips and techniques in every chapter March 25, 2005
Debra Dalgleish (Mississauga, Ontario Canada)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
In this excellent resource for intermediate to advanced Excel users, every chapter has practical ideas that will help you design robust applications more quickly and consistently. The 'Best Practices' and 'Worksheet Design' chapters have valuable tips for setting up your workbooks, even if you won't use programming. Advanced users can add to their programming skills, by applying the book's techniques for using API calls, creating add-ins, building custom charts, and many more features.You can work through the book's exercises, using the CD's sample files, to build the sample application. Or skim through the book, and use it as a reference for its advanced topics. Either way, the book will pay for itself many times over.
Very helpful - great concepts and details March 7, 2005
Doug Glancy
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
Professional Excel Development is an excellent resource for somebody like me, proficient at both Excel and VBA, but who wants to create user-friendly, efficient and maintainable Excel-based programs. The book lives up to it's title, teaching you how to create professional applications. Although it contains a wealth of knowledge about VBA, the focus is on how to maximize the power of Excel using a variety of tools, of which VBA is just one.
I am only about one-third of the way through, but I can testify that the writing is clear, the concepts eye-opening and the examples instructive. I haven't found anything not to like about this book, but here are some of the things I like most:
- Chapter 3 contains 40 pages of best practices, which I will re-read more than once. I especially appreciated the sections on encapsulation - separating data from code - and the later sections that explain how to do so.
- At the beginning the authors stress that a professional Excel developer is one whose programs take full advantage of Excel's powerful features before turning to VBA. They then demonstrate several powerful data validation and user interface techniques that were new to me, and that require no VBA.
- I love messing around with customized menus and commandbars. This book includes an amazing table-driven commandbar-building system that is beautiful to behold, and that the authors generously encourage you to integrate "into any of your applications."
- The commenting of the code on the CD is great. It makes it easy to understand, and to find specific bits that I want to incorporate into my programs.
This book is worth every penny (and I paid full price!). Thanks to the authors for doing such a good job of sharing their development expertise.
 Review of Professionel Excel Development March 6, 2005
XL-Dennis (Ostersund, Sweden)
34 out of 36 found this review helpful
The book is targeting power users and professional developers and if You consider Yourself to be in this group then this book is for you.
It's a well written book, with a high technical level and with a good structure.
But as with every book it has its strong parts as well as weak parts. Weak parts in terms of that some chapters are overviews only and do not give any depth on the subjects they cover.
The chapters that cover best practice are all excellent. Here the authors share all their experience & knowledge by discussion application structures, structure for notation, advanced techniques for userforms and toolbars, error handling, debugging and many other things. The chapters also cover well how to create and use add-ins and so called user defined functions (UDFs).
The chapters that deal with VB 6.0 & Excel are all excellent too. A welcome contribution is that this book leverages many of the good techniques we use in MS VB 6.0 into Excel, especially when it comes to userforms.
The book covers in a nice way how to create & use classes, create & use ActiveX DLL and front-loaders for Excel in MS VB 6.0.
A whole chapter is devoted to Visual Tools for Office System (VSTO) but point also out all the present shortcomings of VSTO.
As with every book nowadays this book also includes a chapter about XML which is well written and with a high technically level. However the chapter is rather short which tend to compress the content.
If the above is what You're looking for then this book is a must have.
The following chapters provide overviews of the subjects:
Worksheet Design
Programming with Database
Data Manipulation techniques
Windows API
Creating XLLs with C#
If You're looking to get more then an introduction or compressed picture on these subject then there exist other books that will give You more.
The book uses an example, PETRAS Timesheet, to exemplify the subject that is covered in each chapter. Some readers will appreciate it very much while other (like me) will skip it. Anyway, PETRAS timesheet is also well worked out like the rest of the book.
In order to work through both the PETRAS Timesheet case and all the examples the book is given You need to have access to the following softwares:
MS Office 2003 Professional (minimum requirement for the VSTO-chapter)
MS Visual Basic 6.0 (no longer available for sale from Microsoft)
Visual Studio.NET (C#)
VSTO (Separate tool that require Visual Studio.NET)
Kind regards,
Dennis Wallentin aka XL-Dennis
Showing reviews 26-30 of 32
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