Books
This is a list of books that I recommend or that have been recommended to me by someone I trust. If you click on them and buy them, I get money.
Update: Frank suggested I provide a place where people can comment on books they’ve read, so I’ve enabled comments for this page. I’ll be monitoring those comments closely, so keep them on topic please. Good suggestion Frank. Thanks.
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| Excel 2007 Formulas (Walkenbach) |
Excel 2003 Power Programming in VBA (Walkenbach) |
VBA Developers Handbook (Getz, Gilbert) |
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| Professional Excel Development (Bullen, Bovey, Green) |
A Book on C (Kelley, Pohl) |
Excel Add-in Development in C\C++ (Dalton) |
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| C++ Primer (Lippman, Lajoie, Moo) |
Code Complete (McConnell) |
Excel PivotTables Recipes (Dalgleish) |
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| Excel 2007 VBA Programmer’s Reference (Green, Bovey, Bullen, Alexander) |
Excel Charts (Walkenbach) |
Excel 2003 Bible (Walkenbach) |
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| Excel VBA Programming For Dummies (Walkenbach) |
My wife says this comment is unnecessary because you probably already know but: You da man! Here I was thinking that I was the greatest thing to ever grace a spreadsheet, then I picked up your book. I went from saying that I was an Excel Guru to saying that I was pretty good. Question, do you do any work or put out any resources on the functions in the Access’ Expression Builder? I once was able to download a dictionary of Excel Functions but I can’t seem to find anything about the ones in Access.
Rog
I’ve read John Walkenbach’s Excel 2002 Power Programming in VBA, which I suspect is 90% the same as the 2003 version shown above. (I have the Polish version of the 2003 version, because I won it in a contest from him, but I can’t follow that very well.)
At any rate, I am a totally self-taught VBA programmer and do my programming usually as the end-user as well. Even so, I like elegant programming over kludges, and this book has been very helpful in illustrating good programming techniques.
Understanding an object-oriented language was very difficult for me. I had written macros since Lotus 123 1a and up to Excel 4, but when I started recording VBA macros and looking at the code, it was a mystery to me. I could create loops after recording, but how to use the model to my advantage escaped me. This book provided a good overview of the object model and many great examples. I refer to it often as a way to improve my code now or to determine how to accomplish something that seems impossible to do manually.
I wish I understood the Class Module section better, because I’d bet I have a lot of uses for it. I follow the basic idea, but the examples given didn’t provide me anything that made me say “aha! I can use this when I do _______!” Some more examples that are business-focused might be helpful.
I could do without the history of the spreadsheet at the start, but that seems to be a convention in computer books.
All-in-all, a fantastic book for someone who knows some programming technique and is starting out in writing VBA code.
I was a classic VB programmer before I started with excel and then with macros(VBA). My recommendation has been always (and I am very proud to see all the books I recommended are here) as follows.
1. You want to get away with just functions and excel user interface go with JWs books excel bible and excel formulas.
2. You read those and are hungry for more and want to do more with vba then start with power programming in vba by JW.. (You are my favorite John).. Getz and Gilbert are good at this juncture but the book has too much of vb programming and advanced API than VBA programming.
3. The last but not the least in VBA.. If you think that you still want to do more after creating some addins in vba and downloading from cpearson, ozgrid, j-walk the last book to read will be Professional excel development by Bovey, Green which is awesome and also touches .net, vsto, com addins.
Then I went for VSTO books which I think is good if you want to become a true Office developer as looking at the way MS is pushing vsto/.net and the way they treated vb6, I dont see vba will be supported in/post office 13 (still long time though).
(I have not mentioned the other books XL 2003 vba from wrox and by MS Press which I found a bit techy to recommend to some novice users who were new to vb6.) In all a great collection and would like to see some VSTO books by Eric Carter, Eric Lippert and VSTO for mere mortals which touch Word, Excel, Outlook also. Thx
Humanities Student in need of Help.
Can anyone help me construct an Excel formula that will 1) determine the length of characters for each word & 2) then distribute each word into a labeled row according to character length for the following Shakespeare quote? . . . “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
Many thanks!
Any recommendations on good books of VST), with good discussions on the transition between VBA and VSTO? How about VSTO for Mere Mortals?
hi,
I need help for convert number to words
like
1500.00 its results come like “Rupees On thousan five hundres only.” how can i do in excel 2007
@Ashish –
Google is your friend.
I searched for “Excel convert number to word” and the first hit turned up the answer:
http://www.meadinkent.co.uk/xlnumberstext.htm
You probably want to post questions like this on a forum such as the Microsoft Newsgroups (groups.google.com).
With all due respect to J Walk, I find his books entirely derivative, and almost always (95% or more) behind current developments. I suppose he has found a comfortable target market, to his credit. He writes better than many, yet he is coasting on a reputation to slide over poor coding. I KNOW he is capable of better, and look forward to seeing it from him (wake up John!).
I like the other titles mentioned here, to which I would add books (some hard to find) written by Conrad Carlberg (e.g., Business Analysis) and Mike Middleton, depending on taste, application, and “need”.
Thanks for the feedback, Dave.
I’d be very interested in getting some specifics from you. Especially why you think my books are behind current developments. Some examples of poor coding would also be helpful.
Please post it here, or via private email (walkenbach at gmail.com).
Thanks!
John
I’d also be interested in the reasons why Dave thinks John’s books are “almost always (95% or more) behind current developments”.
“Power Programming with Excel VBA 2003″ was the first book about VBA that I read (my previous programming experience had been a long time ago as a teenager with Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS), and it helped me to get started writing an Excel add-in that is now becoming increasingly popular in the science world. “Power Programming” has a special place on my book shelf. (My other favorite VBA book is “Professional Excel Development”, also on this page.)
Agreed, there is not much about add-in programming with Visual Studio/VB.NET in “Power Programming”, but nonetheless it is an excellent book.
Kind regards
Daniel
Actually, there is absolutely nothing about add-in programming with Visual Studio/VB.NET in my Power Programming book. It’s a book about VBA.
I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about my books, but I guess people who hate them don’t bother to let me know. That’s why I’d really like to hear from David Braden. Hopefully he can provide some specifics that will make them better.
I discovered and read John Walkenbachs Power Programming book years ago and believe it or not it was life changing! I became the office Guru! Then read a few more books became an a full time office developer. VBA is a skillset that can make you much more valuable; I am convinced I am still enployed at a job I love because I stumbled upon johns no nonsense programming guide…thanks
I have learned a lot from John Walkenbach’s books and his writing style is unique, practical, and is not intimidating by any stretch. Thankfully John has not fallen prey to the dreaded “curse of knowledge” that would otherwise leave beginner or novice VBA users in the dark. The purpose of John’s books (I thought) are to teach VBA and not necessarily to develop complex or high peformance algorithms.
To the comment that suggests we can forego the history pages, I would tend to agree, but that would once again be the curse of knowledge taking effect. Each day is greeted by more people discovering VBA, Excel, and other programming languages for the first time.
Learning VBA and applying it can lead to very different perspectives on how a book should be written or structured. I recently added Professional Excel Development, second edition, to my library and true to its introduction, it picks up where other books have left off. No single book is the definitive answer and certainly all of the titles mentioned on this page have their respective purpose.
John’s books have found their niche and I can only attest from my experience that they have been the core reference for the majority of the solutions I have managed to develop.
Thank you for the references.