Product Description

Microsoft Excel can be much more than just a spreadsheet. It has become adevelopment platform in it own right. Applications written using Excel are partof many corporations' core suites of business-critical applications. In spite ofthis, Excel is too often thought of as a hobbyist's platform. While there arenumerous titles on Excel and VBA, until now there have been none thatprovide an overall explanation of how to develop professional-quality Excel-basedapplications. All three authors are professional Excel developers who runtheir own companies developing Excel-based apps for clients ranging fromindividuals to the largest multinational corporations. In this book they showhow anyone from power users to professional developers can increase thespeed and usefulness of their Excel-based apps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174165 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 936 pages

From the Inside Flap
Unfortunately, Excel is still all too often thought of as a hobbyist platform; that people develop spreadsheet-based applications in their spare time to help out with their day job. A brief look at the shelves of any bookstore seems to confirm that opinion. While there are myriad titles explaining how to use Excel and numerous titles about Excel and VBA, there are none that provide an overall explanation of how to develop professional-quality Excel-based applications. This is that book.

While all the other major languages seem to have a de-facto standard text that explains the commonly-agreed best practices for architecting, designing and developing applications in that language, Excel does not. This book aims to fill that gap.

All three authors are professional Excel developers who run our own companies developing Excel-based applications for clients ranging from individuals to the largest multinational corporations. This book details the approaches we use when designing, developing, distributing and supporting the applications we write for our clients.

This is not a beginner-level book. We assume that the reader will have read and (mostly) understood our Excel 2000/2002 VBA Programmer's Reference, John Walkenbach's Excel N Power Programming or similar titles.

From the Back Cover

Finally, there's a book that treats Excel as the powerful development platform it really is, and covers every facet of developing commercial-quality Excel applications.

This is not a book for beginners. Writing for professional developers and true Excel experts, the authors share insider's knowledge they've acquired building Excel applications for many of the world's largest companies—including Microsoft. Professional Excel Development demonstrates how to get the utmost from Excel, addressing everything from application architectures through worksheet and userform design, charting, debugging, error handling and optimizing performance. Along the way, the authors offer best practices for every type of Excel development, from building add-ins through interacting with XML Web services. Coverage includes

• Building add-ins to provide new Excel functions

• Designing effective worksheets, userforms and other user interface elements

• Leveraging Excel's powerful data analysis features

• Creating sophisticated custom charts

• Handling errors, debugging applications and optimizing performance

• Using class modules and interfaces to create custom objects

• Understanding Windows API calls: when to use them, and how to modify them

• Adding worksheet functions with

• C-based XLLs

• Programming with databases

• Controlling external applications from Excel

• Integrating with Visual Basic 6, VB.NET and Visual Studio Tools for Office

• Using XML to import and export data and communicate with Web services

• Providing help, securing, packaging and distributing

The accompanying CD-ROM contains the book's sample timesheet application at every stage of construction, with detailed code comments. It also includes many examples of the concepts introduced in each chapter and a collection of the authors' Excel development utilities.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Stephen Bullen is founder of Office Automation Ltd., a specialist in Excel, Access and Visual Basic development that serves many of the world's largest businesses. Rob Bovey is president of Application Professionals, a software developer specializing in Microsoft Office, Visual Basic and SQL Server applications. He has developed several add-ins shipped by Microsoft with Excel. John Green is founder of Execuplan Consulting, a specialist in Excel and Access business application development. The authors have each held Microsoft's coveted Excel MVP status for eight consecutive years, and are coauthors of Excel 2000/Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's Reference (Wrox Press).

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A Great Book to Accelerate Development Skills
I have developed quite a few automated Excel applications over a number of years but mostly on my own. To do this, I'd picked up quite a lot of bits and pieces knowledge on the whole Excel VBA subject from various books and newsgroups. However, I'd not had the coaching to do complete development projects from design to distribution.

This book has proved to be the perfect manual for someone like me, who just didn't quite have the professional knowledge of how to build a well-designed, robust application from start to finish. After reading just the first few chapters, I'm already much more advanced in understanding the thinking behind the design, why to take which approaches and why not to take other approaches. It really is similar to having an expert sitting beside me and leading me through the steps. Many thanks to the authors for filling this hole in the knowledge market.

It's a must have
Knowing a little of the reputation of the authors I expected this book to include the depth of content as advertised. It does, exceeding my expectations. What I am particularly impressed with is how well it is written. Taking the dry edges off a strictly technical manual makes such a difference to even wanting to get to grips with what may be new and complex topics.

Even where a particular topic is familiar to the reader it is bound to include some new tips, any one of which could repay an investment in the book.

It's not for beginners but a must have for anyone who uses Excel extensively. If that's you, and you are wondering if you need it, my best advice is stop thinking about it and get it!

Excel-lent!
I ordered this book as soon as I'd read the sample chapters at www.oaltd.co.uk - I finally understood about the Windows API and wanted more!
It's totally different to any other Excel/VBA book available, so comparisons are hard. It doesn't have chapters about the Range or Worksheet objects - the authors seem to expect us to know that already - but instead has topics like choosing architectures, development best practices, optimising performance and rock-solid error handling.
It's a big book so it's hard to pick any bits out
for special mention. Every chapter seems to contain something I'd never seen before, with even the most complex topics (such as custom interfaces, creating XLLs and using XML and web services) explained in a way that made them all easy to understand.
The best bits for me though have to be the practical examples that end most of the chapters. By seeing how the concepts have been applied to their sample application, I can readily see how to apply them to mine, and have already begun to do so.
This is a serious book, not for beginners, and to me it seems to be in a different league to the rest.