Product Description

“As Excel applications become more complex and the Windows development platform more powerful, Excel developers need books like this to help them evolve their solutions to the next level of sophistication. Professional Excel Development is a book for developers who want to build powerful, state-of-the-art Excel applications using the latest Microsoft technologies.”

–Gabhan Berry, Program Manager, Excel Programmability, Microsoft

“The first edition of Professional Excel Development is my most-consulted and most-recommended book on Office development. The second edition expands both the depth and range. It shines because it takes every issue one step further than you expect. The book relies on the authors’ current, real-world experience to cover not only how a feature works, but also the practical implications of using it in professional work.”

–Shauna Kelly, Director, Thendara Green

“This book illustrates techniques that will result in well-designed, robust, and maintainable Excel-based applications. The authors’ advice comes from decades of solid experience of designing and building applications. The practicality of the methods is well illustrated by the example timesheet application that is developed step-by-step through the book. Every serious Excel developer should read this and learn from it. I did.”

–Bill Manville, Application Developer, Bill Manville Associates

The Start-to-Finish Guide to Building State-of-the-Art Solutions with Excel 2007

In this book, four world-class Microsoft® Excel developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors—three of whom have been honored by Microsoft as Excel Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)—show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel’s most powerful new features. Using their techniques,you can reduce development costs, time to market, and hassle—and build more effective, successful solutions.

Fully updated for Excel 2007, this book starts where other books on Excel programming leave off. Through a hands-on case study project, you’ll discover best practices for planning, architecting, and building Excel applications that are robust, secure, easy to maintain, and highly usable. If you’re a working developer, no other book on Excel programming offers you this much depth, insight, or value.

•    Design worksheets that will be more useful and reliable

•    Leverage built-in and application-specific add-ins

•    Construct applications that behave like independent Windows programs

•    Make the most of the new Ribbon user interface

•    Create cross-version applications that work with legacy versions of Excel

•    Utilize XML within Excel applications

•    Understand and use Windows API calls

•    Master VBA error handling, debugging, and performance optimization

•    Develop applications based on data stored in Access, SQL Server, and other databases

•    Build powerful visualization solutions with Excel charting engine

•    Learn how to work with VB.NET and leverage its IDE

•    Automate Microsoft Excel with VB.NET

•    Create managed COM add-ins for Microsoft Excel with VB.NET

•    Develop Excel solutions with Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)

•    Integrate Excel with Web Services

•    Deploy applications more securely and efficiently

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9493 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1176 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

The Start-to-Finish Guide to Building State-of-the-Art Solutions with Excel 2007

In this book, four world-class Microsoft® Excel developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors–three of whom have been honored by Microsoft as Excel Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)–show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel’s most powerful new features. Using their techniques,you can reduce development costs, time to market, and hassle–and build more effective, successful solutions. Fully updated for Excel 2007, this book starts where other books on Excel programming leave off. Through a hands-on case study project, you’ll discover best practices for planning, architecting, and building Excel applications that are robust, secure, easy to maintain, and highly usable. If you’re a working developer, no other book on Excel programming offers you this much depth, insight, or value.

• Design worksheets that will be more useful and reliable
• Leverage built-in and application-specific add-ins
• Construct applications that behave like independent Windows programs
• Make the most of the new Ribbon user interface
• Create cross-version applications that work with legacy versions of Excel
• Utilize XML within Excel applications
• Understand and use Windows API calls
• Master VBA error handling, debugging, and performance optimization
• Develop applications based on data stored in Access, SQL Server, and other databases
• Build powerful visualization solutions with Excel charting engine
• Learn how to work with VB.NET and leverage its IDE
• Automate Microsoft Excel with VB.NET
• Create managed COM add-ins for Microsoft Excel with VB.NET
• Develop Excel solutions with Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)
• Integrate Excel with Web Services
• Deploy applications more securely and efficiently

About the Author

Rob Bovey, President of Application Professionals, has developed several Excel add-ins shipped by Microsoft. He coauthored the Microsoft Excel 97 Developers Kit and Excel 2007 VBA Programmer’s Reference.

Dennis Wallentin has developed Excel solutions since the 1980s through his firm, XL-Dennis, based in Östersund, Sweden.

Stephen Bullen, coauthor of The Excel 2007 VBA Programmer’s Reference, owns Office Automation, Ltd., based in Essex, Ireland.

John Green owns Execuplan Consulting, a Sydney, Australia-based consultancy specializing in Excel and Access development.

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.