This book is...I can't find the words. It has helped me tremendously. I have gone further with Excel then I ever dreamed I could on my own. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to get more use out of their spreadsheets.

While I had used this for a course in VBA, and noted that it was an extremely concise text, I found it near useless when I was working on my assignments. This book had the information in it, but oftentimes, I simply could not find this information quickly (if at all), and instead Googled much of my information.

On a positive note, this is a well-written book (note: not well-indexed), and therefore useful if you're learning VBA and exploring each chapter one-at-a-time. If you're looking strictly for a reference book for VBA, however, I would strongly advise against getting this particular text.

Also, this text is not written for beginners (a point that the author makes clear), even though some of the material in this book could only be for beginners (for example, the introductory VBA material).

Excellent book for anyone looking to quickly get up and programming VBA in Excel. Don't have to be familiar specifically with Visual Basic but a reasonable knowledge of programming a help. Would have given it 5 stars if it had a thorough reference section on VBA.

Book was helpful in the setup of various 'maintenance' routines. It gave me a fresh look at the use of properties, allowing me to streamline the coding. Unfortunately, company directives have us converting the work to 'active server pages' with a SQL 2005 database server. Since the source data is Oracle, I have been working on DB to DB utilities.

It's an excellent an useful book. Personally, It's helped me a lot. I recommend to read it, because it has many simple and difficult examples of macros, codes, programming's techniques and functions. Also it teachs about API of Windows . It'll definitely help to be a successful developer on Excel.

This is the first book I read on the subject (I am proficient in other languages/platforms).
It is a decent introduction, and it gives you a good overview of various areas of Excel/VBA programming. There are plenty of code examples and lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty modifying and debugging them.

I was very disappointed by its poor structure and lack of rigour. Concepts are introduced by example in seemingly unrelated chapters, therefore scattering language features all over the place. This, combined with an utterly useless index, means that unless you get a digital copy of the book you will have a very hard time using this book as a reference.

Also, in my opinion, the author has not gone out much using other more sophisticated languages, and this lack of discipline/hacking attitude is often noticeable. Not only in the occasional sloppiness of his code (whoever proof-read this book did an awful job too by the way), but also in the poor explanation of higher features of VBA, for instance class modules, relegated to a 10-page chapter towards the end, whose examples are anyway missing the whole point of stateful encapsulation through class objects. Similarly poorly explained (many chapters earlier, incidentally) is the use of class objects for Application-level events, with the mysterious "With Events" qualifier which is never really explained anywhere.
I often found that the material lacked diagrams and more abstract and general explanations that go beyond the "learn by example" cookbook approach.
Finally, I was annoyed by the frequent, not-so-subliminal adverts to the author's software package, of which a trial is available on the CD.

Overall, it did the job for me - helping me getting to grips with the language and the object model. But if you are already beyond the basics get yourself a good reference, or perhaps Professional Excel Development: The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications Using Microsoft(R) Excel and VBA(R) (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series), which I have already started reading with interest and seems to explain much more methodically best practices and more advanced concepts - while still not a VBA reference.

The book was brand new as said in the description. Had a CD which was nice to find certain things in the book easier. The book itself though has very easy examples, so if you plan to do complicated programming, you might want to consider something else (if there is anything better available).

When I opened this book up, I was surprised to find much more than just VBA programming. In fact, you don't get much "VBA-Anything" until about page 130. There's all sorts of tips and tricks in the earlier pages, along with some good background of how Excel was developed and how it's supposed to function--stuff that will be valuable the more you get into coding with VBA.

This is not a book for a person just getting into Excel. I've taken two college-level courses in Excel, and I've played with spreadsheets for a number of years previous to that, so I'm somewhat comfortable with them. If I wasn't, this book would overwhelm and intimidate. So if you haven't worked with spreadsheets much, I would suggest getting some experience in just working with one before you tackle VBA.

This is a great book. I've been programming in Excel VBA since about 1997. I've never had a formal class on writing Visual Basic or VBA code so I've always scratched through on my own flipping back and forth through Visual Basic books and searching through the index like crazy to find out what I needed. Programming in VBA started out as a hobby for me. Most books just state Visual Basic info and don't go into much detail. Walkenbach does a great job, especially for beginners that already have a little bit of experience with VBA. He starts out with the fundamentals and builds on them and gives plenty of example code. This helps give the reader a good grasp of how Excel's VBA environment truly works and it totally changed my perspective as far as how I program. Visual Basic books don't specifically target on Excel like this book does and VB is not necessarily exactly the same as VBA.

If you're just starting to learn VBA for Excel, then this book is worth every penny you pay and more. I have about 4 other books on VBA and I'd trade about all of them in for this one book. I definitely recommend reading about turning the automatic updating off and I think most beginners will find Chapter 11 regarding working with ranges EXTREMELY useful, especially the portion about transferring the data to a variant array for computation then back to the range for much faster macro speeds.

If you are starting out in Excel VBA, I definitely recommend this be the first book that you read.

This book plus Bill Jelen's "VBA and Macros for Microsoft Excel (Business Solutions)" makes for a complete volume on this subject. Walkenbach's book alone is not enough. Take it to the next level with Bullen/Bovey/Green's "Professional Excel Development."

Best ever book on Excel 2003. Mr. Walkenbach clearly is THE guru of Excel. Until I wanted to learn VBA, I never paid much attention to Excel books. Since then I've done a lot of reading and this is by far the best, not just about VBA, but all aspects of Excel. Even reading about things I thought I knew a lot about was helpful and revealing. His writing is clear, witty, simple and to the point. I hold the user manual for cpm's SuperCalc as the gold standard of software manual clarity - even though this is ten times bigger, it's just as good. Well done. Highly recommended - thank you Mr. Walkenbach.

Thorough and clear reference guide. Highly recommended for anyone using (or wanting to use) VBA to automate or "slick-up" excel applications.

Excelent book to learn the capabilities of Excel VBA. I learnt VBA by viewing online examples and worked my way up to developing a small purchase system, which connects to databases. This book has taught me with good examples a way to better organize my code, and find new ways to do certain tasks.
I would definitely recomend this book to begginers and intermediate users to learn in a clean and simple way. I dont consider myself and advanced user, so don't know what kind of books these people use, but I am sure they would give it a thumbs up.

I read through the work while looking at my own Excel programs and have improved some greatly. The book obviously is not for beginners -- too many assumptions on general usages. Overall, a good guide to use.

I read through the work while looking at my own Excel programs and have improved some greatly. The book obviously is not for beginners -- too many assumptions on general usages. Overall, a good guide to use.

This book is fantastic for someone that already has a little experience with VBA. I found that the explanations were sometimes a little less detailed than I would like but the huge amounts of example code were enough for me to figure out how it worked. The included CD has excellent examples of code that I keep going back to over and over. A lot of the the VBA he uses is very functional in both PowerPoint and Word. Using mostly information from this book I have written a spreadsheet that will automatically create a powerpoint slide show (from scratch) using the data from the spreadsheet by just pressing a button in the spreadsheet. Bravo for this book and CD combo!

This book is fantastic for someone that already has a little experience with VBA. I found that the explanations were sometimes a little less detailed than I would like but the huge amounts of example code were enough for me to figure out how it worked. The included CD has excellent examples of code that I keep going back to over and over. A lot of the the VBA he uses is very functional in both PowerPoint and Word. Using mostly information from this book I have written a spreadsheet that will automatically create a powerpoint slide show (from scratch) using the data from the spreadsheet by just pressing a button in the spreadsheet. Bravo for this book and CD combo!

I bought this book based on the review of others. If this is really the best out there, somebody new needs to get started writing Excel books.

IF you already know some programming concepts and IF you are willing to spend alot of time combing through the book, you might find what you are looking for. I found just enough to put my old programming experience together with Excel's built-ins and alot of trial and error to get what I needed.

The index is pathetic, clearly put together by a computer rather than a knowledgeable human being. The examples are all focused on the formatting of cells or cutesy message boxes. Message boxes can be useful, but if I only needed Excel to format data, I wouldn't need to write code.

I bought this book based on the review of others. If this is really the best out there, somebody new needs to get started writing Excel books.

IF you already know some programming concepts and IF you are willing to spend alot of time combing through the book, you might find what you are looking for. I found just enough to put my old programming experience together with Excel's built-ins and alot of trial and error to get what I needed.

The index is pathetic, clearly put together by a computer rather than a knowledgeable human being. The examples are all focused on the formatting of cells or cutesy message boxes. Message boxes can be useful, but if I only needed Excel to format data, I wouldn't need to write code.

A great resource for any one who compiles a plethora of spreadsheets for their company.

For anyone looking to make your Spreadsheet zing then this a must have reference book. Truely opens the door for those wanting to inprove their programming skills

Having previously read Walkenbach's Excel VBA for Dummies, I was a little dissapointed at the extent to which content was mirrored. That being said, I still have to think this is probably the best book for the beginning Excel VBA programmer aspiring to significantly improve his or her skills. Walkenbach's books are well written, easy to follow, progress logically, and focus on the things you really want to know. He does a good job of balancing between providing the reader with the underlying theory, and providing practical examples. It has also proven to be a valuable reference... more than any other Excel book I own, I have gone back to Power Programming again and again.

This book is one of the best ones that explain Excel & VBA deeply. It's recommended for the people who knows the programming bases as general. I owned this book and the author puts a lot of his mind explaining the Excel and VBA. I have been learned a lot because of this book. Thanks for the author Mr. John Walkenbach and for AMAZON. Eng. Abbas Fathy

There is one essential difference between this version and the 2002 version of the book. The 2003 version does NOT have a PDF copy of the book on the accompanying CDROM - the earlier version does!

I highly recommend this book. I have a series of books by John Walkenbach; Excel Power Programming, Excel 2003 Formulas, and Excel Charts. I can't live without these books. Work is always hectic with crazy deadlines and never enough time to do the job and Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA is a great reference book that has saved me numerous times. Since the authors examples are straight forward and easy to follow I'm able to incorporate many of his approaches straight into my work, saving me precious time. The companion CD is a must as the PDF file of the text is searchable making it quick and easy to focus in on what information you need. The CD also includes Excel files which are great examples.

This is a good place to start to learn programming with Excel. I've used Mr Walkenbach's site as a reference for years; the man knows his stuff.

If you're looking for a primer on starting to automate & improve Excel spreadsheets, this is a great book.

If you're already scripting Excel Macros & looking to go to the next step, you'll pick up a few tricks from this book. Otherwise go for "Professional Excel Development" by Bullen, Bovey, & Green.

I have used John's Excel 2000 version of the book and bought the Excel 2003 version to keep up to date. John has done a wonderful job of presenting the material as well as well thought out and documented examples in the book and on the companion CD. The companion CD is a real time saver in creating VBA code for projects.

This is a very good book but not for beginners. This book for people who intermediate level Excel/VBA programmers and wish to go further. The organization of this book is poor but it is all there if you look. Excel/VBA topics are well treated. However if you are looking for ADO or working with databases this is not the book. With these caveats I give this book high marks.

Like some previous reviewers, I was disappointed with some of the dated material presented in this book. If you have the Excel 2000 book by Walkenbach, then you basically have this book. My purchase was returned for refund. A very good book to contrast this with would be Steve Roman's book (O'Reilly). I take offense to the over the top comments of reviewers such as "intelligent-but-not-so-wise." A good rule of thumb is that if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn't.

I use VBA (Visual Basic) extensively with my job and have to say that this is the best book I've found dealing with VBA for applications. Not only does it tailor the application wonderfully to Excel but the strategies and examples are useful for developing objects in Access or for just using Visual Basic as a stand alone. I was using a book by another author to work with VBA in Access but I had to throw it away and rely on Walkenbach's book. It was much easier to understand and much more applicable to what I was doing.

I think it is good to the beginning with Excel Macro.

I first heard of John Walkenbach this past summer. I work for a large Financial Services firm in New York City, and our employees use his Excel Add-in extensively. I purchased his book on Power Programming VBA in an effort to learn how to program Excel, and, now, I feel duty-bound, to give you some feedback.

It was early January of this year (2005) when I purchased "Excel 2003 Power Programming". At first I was skeptical. The book arrived, 1000 pages thick, and I do not like wordy books, but having heard of his reputation, I began, what became, a spell-binding read. So intrigued was I by his clear, insightful, and sprightly method in reaching the heart of VBA and its practical Excel uses, that I went back to Amazon and purchased two of his other books: "Excel 2003 Formulas" and "Excel Charts". I have almost completed them, too, and I am reeling with amazement at this man's work and knowledge!

Firstly, the author is one terrific writer who arouses your interest and is able to convey Excel's object structure and its related programming concepts in a way that few others can (especially, if you are new to programming). The writing balance is perfect: not too wordy, not too concise. Secondly, the author's possesses a world-class knowledge of Excel and how to make full use of it. (As I understand, Dr. Walkenbach has written 30 books over the last decade on Excel alone!). Thirdly, the author offers you many superb practical examples - page after page. This greatly aids your understanding and inspires your imagination. Fourthly, the book is packed with Excel tips and tricks that will, sometimes, fascinate you or humble you if you considered yourself an Excel expert. (This is even more applicable to his book on Excel Formulas).

I have read or perused a number of the well-known Excel VBA Programming books, but I have, so far, seen nothing that comes close to this author's book in terms of clarity and rich content. Beyond Excel, John Walkenbach's brilliant presentation is a lesson to all book-writers on how to present material to learners!

The following were some of the highlights for me. The author shows in detail how to write custom functions; how to build a Wizard; how to build self-expanding or interactive charts (animated charts too!); how to build a progress indicator to show the progress of a long macro; how to transfer ranges into an array, manipulate it, and back; how to make a spreadsheet appear in a dialogue box (or user form); how to produce complex user forms; and the hidden details behind Excel events. The author's explanation of Excel Add-Ins in Chapter 21 is so clear that, after reading the material, I was able to create one in minutes! In Chapter 23, the author gives you his personal technique (and code) for automating the building of menus in Excel. The author also shows you how to build your own objects (if you don't understand this now, you will), and how to manipulate files in your computer from VBA.

Accompanying the book is a CD with a treasure-trove of practical demonstrations, bonus utilities and more. The plethora is organized by chapter, so you can read through the book and see the concepts in action. I guarantee you that this CD alone (and those that accompany his other books) outclasses those available with competing books. An e-book is also included so you can print out any chapter to read on the train etc. The author, to his credit, also takes extra care to make his VBA code very readable and understandable (unlike other VBA books that I have read or perused).

The author's creative side will probably rub off on you, as you watch him produce an exact replica of Microsoft's functions (using VBA instead of C) and do some other sportive exercises that demonstrate so well the power of VBA! (If you read his book on charts you will sometimes not believe it until you see it.)

Dr. Walkenbach goes further and outdoes Microsoft at their own game! On Page 508, he unveils his enhanced version of Excel's Form utility. (See Data > Forms... on the Excel menu). His improved version adds a lot of needed features to Excel's native version. Throughout the book, the author brings up Excel's limitations that present a challenge to professionals. Instead of bemoaning Microsoft's shortcomings (a pet peeve for other authors), he whips out a trick or three to overcome the impasse. (For example, creating a chart in a dialogue box, P. 499.)

Dr. Walkenbach comes across as wanting to share with you his full knowledge, in order to turn the ordinary, but proficient, Excel user into a "power programmer". Furthermore, the author allows you to buy the full source code of his award winning "Power Utility Pak", which he sells for a living! Truly great teachers derive satisfaction from giving you their full knowledge, and that is the case with John Walkenbach, a magnanimous and dedicated author, an "Excel Legend" - in the words of Bastien Mensink developer of ASAP Utilities (www.Asap-Utilities.com).

Who should NOT buy John Walkenbach's book?
That's right, I said it! And here is the answer. If you are an experienced programmer or academic looking for a more theoretical approach, or want an Excel-programming Reference book (that covers all or most of the objects in Excel's Object Structure with its thousands of properties and methods), or just want a little more computer science, then you are simply at the wrong book-stand. However, out of the vast majority of Excel users, for those who wish to rapidly become Excel programmers, this book (and his others) are the cr�me-de-la-cr�me. Taking myself (an ordinary Excel user) as an example, I gained such a wealth of knowledge from the author's books in the last three months that I now find myself floating effortlessly through Microsoft's Excel Object Model and Help topics, and going a step beyond his books.
I hope this addresses the subjective critique emerging from one or two reviewers (and, perhaps, from a few more intelligent-but-not-so-wise ones to come.)

Conclusion:
Regarding the art of book writing, let us take, for example, a subject such as physics. Which of two equally capable authors does more collective good, one who writes a perfectly logical treatise which is only understood by a few with a mind or drive to understand, or an author who takes the former and puts it forth in an exciting manner so that his readers' minds fill with knowledge?

Einstein said: "I have no special gift - I am only passionately curious"
Perhaps you will agree with me that it is of greater good to create curiosity that to simply feed it.

Thank you Dr. Walkenbach!!!

John is a great writer. I have a number of his books in my library.

Unfortunately, he's not keeping up with the product. The primary changes in Excel 2003 (xml, SharePoint integration, InfoPath, etc) are essentially missing from his Book. No where does he explain how Excel's object model has been extended to support these important new features.

Its like he took the Excel 2000 version of this book and pretty much just changed the date on the cover.

I returned my copy.

I was very disappointed in the book. I have written some macros in VBA for excel and wanted to expand my knowledge while creating some useful macros for my company.
If one was intending to read this book front to back, I am sure they could learn quite a lot about Excel and VBA, but as for using it as a tool to expand on existing knowledge and/or as a reference...it falls short.
Most of the examples did some neat things, but trying to build upon them to fit a specific need indicated just how limited the explanation of how the examples work are.
I often ran across things in the examples that I would later find a use for, but then be unable to locate them since they were buried in some seeming unrelated portion of the book, and the index was just about useless.
If you want to start learning VBA or if the examples in the book do what you need then this may be the book for you, but if you are expecting to build upon the examples and/or use them as a reference for writing your own custom macros/tools, I would suggest looking elsewhere.

I have been using John Walkenbach's VBA book for several years starting 2000 version and one of the best investments I have ever made in terms of book.

You don't have to read the book all, you just decide what you wnat to do and quickly find it in the book. Then the examples are great and helpful. I owe everything I know in Excel VBA to this book and had written programs with 16000+ line codes of VBA.

If I ever write a book, I wish I could do as good as John Walkenbach.

This is a great book for those that are
-Advanced Excel users, but Beginner / Intermediate with VBA
-Programmers that are picking up VBA (Me)

Not for
-Basic Excel users
-Advanced VBA programmers

General Outline
The author steps through the basics of spreadsheets and spreadsheet applications before introducing VBA, and does well covering most of the aspects of Excel.

Good - This is a weighty tome, coming in at over 1,000 pages, and is an overall excellent reference to those that are starting to use VBA.
- Contains excellent overview of using VBA with Excel, with extensive coverage of userforms and all their controls, and actual programming.
- Gets deep into Excel specific features like charts and pivot tables
- Excellent coverage of the differences (and possible problems) with different versions of Excel.
- FAQ and Appendixes that are actually helpful and provide useful information

Bad - Not too much to really pick on here, but I generally dislike books that are filled with some extraneous information, just to get that "Ultimate Reference" look about them. The chapter "Excel 2003:Where it came From", and the sometimes overly inflated explanations seemed liked padding. But otherwise a GREAT book.

My principal occupation for the last 13 years has revolved around Excel macros and VBA. Walkenbach's Excel books have been lifesavers.

Just reading one page in this book pulled me out of a ticklish problem constructing a menu. The code examples are complete and always accurate (and well annotated).

My first 15 minutes with this book saved me the cover price in not having to stop what I was doing to search the web for an obscure instruction.

If you do any programming in Excel; buy this book!

Needing to finish my first Excel add-in, and frustrated by the incompleteness and obscurity of MS's help system, I picked up this book after reading warm recommendations from readers of earlier versions.

If you have never programmed Excel before, but have programmed a tiny bit in some other language, and do not have great ambitions for software development, this might be a fine text. It is quite readable and full of useful information. Walkenbach introduces VBA quickly, which is great, but so quickly he forgets to say what most of the language constructs do. His approach to teaching the Excel object model is to provide several fairly well written examples of little macros and utilities, each one with a clear English explanation. Unfortunately, if the technique you need does not appear in any of these examples, you are out of luck, because his explanations are neither extensive, detailed, nor thorough enough to impart a good understanding of what is going on. This, coupled with Excel's erratic behavior (mis-type a property name and watch your user form mysteriously disappear, for instance), makes it very difficult to become independently productive without spilling a lot of sweat and tears.

The book's strengths include the numerous and well-organized examples provided on the companion CD; the occasional sidebar that offers first-hand knowledge of bugs, inconsistencies, and strange design; fairly broad, if incomplete, coverage of the major aspects of Excel VBA programming; and very clear indications of differences among various Excel versions (97, 2000, 2003 mainly). Walkenbach is obviously an expert and has been so for a long time.

The weaknesses become apparent in contrasting this book with, say, Roman's text (O'Reilley). Where Walkenbach gives a macro to display all the icons associated with the several thousand Excel 'FaceId's, Roman publishes the complete table as an appendix. Where Walkenbach loosely skims over the properties of many key objects, such as ranges and charts, Roman takes the time to provide a terse but useful description of nearly every property, as well as a very illuminating diagram of the object hierarchy. Where Walkenbach completely omits to describe how VBA works, Roman actually offers a deeper explanation (showing how object references are arranged in memory, for instance, and describing exactly how a for..next loop is executed). Boring stuff for some, maybe, but a huge time saver for those who appreciate that the details matter. For someone who either has a lot of programming experience, or who plans to develop more than toy utilities or one-off apps in Excel VBA, Roman's approach is much more useful than Walkenbach's.

If Walkenbach is appropriate for your background and ambitions, then you will probably agree it is a four- or five-star effort. Otherwise, you will likely be somewhat disappointed and, like me, will quickly find yourself looking for another book.