good books for Mastering MS Excel

Can anyonyone recommend me any good
books to master MS Excel, which cover all the complex function up to advance macros, VBA programming.

There are tons of books on Exel but I would like any advice on the good ones

Cheers,
$0314

RasterBurner $0314
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Books by John Walkenbach are excellent (though I haven't looked at his Office 2003 books yet).  Here is one on Formulas and one on VBA:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0764540734
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0764540726

bill
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Macros are really just embedded functions in the spreadsheet.  If you need a function to do something that isn't provided by the built-in functions you can use a macro.

To do a macro, just select Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor.  Once you enter a function, you can use it just as you would the built-in functions.

Make sure macros are enabled using Tools | Macro | Security.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Sorry, hate to be nitpicky, but macros most definitely are not "just embedded functions". Macros (VBA) allow you almost unlimited customization. You could even write an entire GUI program in Excel using VBA in which the user never even sees a spreadsheet. I would assume that you would need two separate books - one on macros and one on functions, since they are so different.
I have never read Walkenbach's books but his website is excellent, so his books must be as well.
http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/index.htm

Have fun!

Jordan Lev
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Incidentally, if we're talking Excel 2003, the Visual Studio Tools for Office allow you to write .Net code against the Excel object model.

Just a shameless plug, really - overkill for someone who's just starting out with Excel. :)

[Disclaimer: I'm a Microsoft Employee]
Philo

Philo
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Er, can't you do that with just about any version of Office provided you enable the proper reference?

Kyralessa
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

I have done it using C# from Visual Studio .NET 1.0.

I controled Word 2000, Word XP and Word 2003 from code.

Here is a link about how to do it:

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/wordapplication.asp

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Thanks Jordan that is a great link.

I'm a vba / excel midget, but I know a certain accountant at work that's going to be mighty happy tomorrow.

Mike
Wednesday, March 17, 2004

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