Review of Microsoft Excel VBA Professional Projects (Paperback)

This book's subtitle "Professional Projects" led me to believe that the projects would be useful examples easily adapted to typical business situations. I was wrong. The books starts out with a breezy 150-page overview of VBA but then goes into the development of four projects that incorporate the most complex aspects of VBA programming. The first project is enough for all but the most experienced VBA programmer to shelve the book and forget about it.The first project, an excel-html converter, is preceded by three chapters that describe the necessary components for the converter: Custom Menus, Charts and Custom Objects. It is highly unlikely that the average business user is going to expend the time and energy to learn how to create their own custom objects particularly for a project of such little usefulness. The second project is a Data Analysis project incorporating a data exchange with Access and pivot tables. The third project involves creating a stock ticker with internet access and the final project involves automating data analysis and fitting a curve to the data. I did like the format of the book whereby each project is preceded by a couple chapters explaining the components (excel objects) that make up the project but those chapters are not in-depth enough for the casual VBA to fully grasp what is going on. The projects themselves are suited for an experienced users or those seeking to become serious VBA programmers.For the business user I recommend instead Albright's VBA for Modelers.

Product Description
Microsoft Excel VBA Professional Projects illustrates and teaches intermediate to advanced techniques in VBA programming using Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet application. It provides an introduction to VBA and Excel VBA before proceeding through four to five programming projects using Excel to illustrate basic and advanced programming techniques. It does not assume any prior knowledge of Excel VBA programming.

About the Author
Duane Birnbaum received a Ph.D from the University of California, Riverside in 1991 in physical chemistry.He works at Biogel Technology as a research scientist and has authored numerous scientific articles in the areas of chemical physics, biochemistry, and chemical engineering.He began teaching part-time in the computer science department of Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis in 1997, focusing on an introductory course in data analysis with an emphasis on using the tools in spreadsheet applications.Duane lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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