The best Microsoft VBA books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Excel 2003 Power Programming with VBA. Currently $4.94 on Amazon, though you might consider the latest edition. Got this when I was an undergrad, taught myself VBA and became an Excel "power user". Knowing VBA has been infinitely useful in my career and having it on my resume (along with projects and tools I've created with it) landed me my current job even though I wasn't even in the market at the time!

If you're making a career in finance, as opposed to in Tech, then Python and Excel are both great ways to go. Per SteamPunkMoonz's excellent comment, Python actually could be better.

If you do go the VBA route, this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Excel-2013-Power-Programming-VBA/dp/1118490398

If you go the Python route... then I highly recommend that you: 1) Download Anaconda (https://www.anaconda.com/) 2) Learn how to use Jupyter Notebook (comes with Anaconda) 3) Use Jupyter to learn how to use Pandas (also comes with Anaconda)

If you need more details, just ask... happy to help!

In case anyone else is also interested, I found this book to be a fantastic resource. It teaches Excel, but more it actually teaches how to create professional workbooks: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Professional-Excel-Development-Applications-Addison-Wesley-dp-0321508793/dp/0321508793/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

I don't get to use Excel much, these days, but this book plus some prior Excel experience was extremely valuable for solving general business problems.

Contrary to u/mactreb you could start a table as a bit of a sheet just filling in al the details. Then you are already halfway in.

Having a table with fine date, due date, pay date, and the culprit's details will get you started of very nicely.

Then you can just build a few queries to begin with, like overdue fines, top Culprits etc.

Optimizing like making things relational can be done at any stage, when things start to grow and it get's to the point where converting it to a relational format makes more sense.

Additonal to u/nrgins mention of youtube tutorials I'm still a big fan of books, buy something like access 2019 bible to have all the topics in a proper order, in paper version so you can add sticky papers and scribble your notes.

I find trying to learn Access completely over the course of a single task to complex for most given time one can allocate to it, while also producing results to show for. But just start of simple, and set goals as you go along fitting your pace and needs of complexity (or simplicity, as once you get the hang of relations a whole world opens up).

And stick around in this sub, just to learn and get inspiured of other's questions and answers.

What I'm pointing out below, might seem very fancy, but are essentials to use access (and other databases) efficiently. These are things I would have wanted to learn on day one, but was never taught, as I trialed and errored a lot myself. .

Back in the day, there was not to much around to learn from on the web. A good book like Access-2019-Bible . A paperback would be nice to glance through and make remarks in.

A tiny bit of background; I started with VB 2.0 (yea yea yea, I'm old, I know) and used books to learn things, and there is value there... but I wanted to warn you that you're gonna need a lot more. Also books get old before they are released. So be aware of that too.

Since you mentioned VBA and a book I am assuming you are new to all things. Because of that I highly recommend VBA for Dummies. The Dummies books tend to be a good primer and are easy and fun to read.

Ok, that said, welcome to the world of development.

Yes, start with VBA for dummies :-)

https://www.amazon.com/Excel-Programming-Dummies-John-Walkenbach/dp/1118490371

Look at the related books on amazon to this book, then you have other books also.

Anything by John Walkenbach if you're looking for a textbook. 2013 power programming is an excellent resource if you're willing to pour through it. Only $40 new on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118490398/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_8kuEEb43XQB3B

Link to Amazon.co.uk. I cannot remember the edition I have (it's in the garage somewhere) but that seems to be the most recent.

Excel VBA Programming for Dummies is where I started, and it covered everything I ended up needing. It's only $10 bucks, so there's minimal risk if you think it sucks ;)

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-VBA-Programming-For-Dummies/dp/1118490371

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2013-Power-Programming-VBA/dp/1118490398/ref=zg_bs_4047_1

MS doesn't fuck around with their educational books.

If you're trying to learn VB itself, you don't need to fuck with VBA for Excel - just learn VB. But really don't learn VB because there's no reason to. You should start with C++ and graduate to C#. Fuck Java.

Have you explored converting the VBA to a COM add in?

Edit:

• Consider posting this over at /r/excel.

• Check out the book Professional Excel Development: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Excel-Development-Definitive-Applications/dp/0321508793

I used the 2007 edition of Power Programming VBA

It has the normal "Hello World" type of introuduction, but has a great glossary for looking up specific terms/case scenarios. It also came with a disc that included workbooks with macro code, so you can see it in action. But it looks like the 2013 edition has gone with a web based host for the documents.

I used it to get up to speed with VBA, then used it as reference, and after about 1-2 years it's now collecting dust. However, it was definitely worth it to get off the ground and I can't recommend it enough.

It's a way to automate operations in your MS Office documents. There's plenty of info for free online, but if you're starting from scratch or don't already know how to program in any language, I would recommend picking up a book, as it would be more of a guided introduction to the subject matter. I'm not familiar with this title, but anything highly rated on amazon (helps if it is specific to the version of Excel you are running) should do the trick:

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2013-Power-Programming-VBA/dp/1118490398/

A good way to get your feet wet is to record a macro in Excel and try editing the VB code that gets created. I'm sure there's some tedious task you find yourself repeating all the time, for which you wish there was a keyboard shortcut. Well that's precisely what macros and scripts are for. Record a macro of the operation, then look at the code and try editing the code to better suit your needs.

To take up space, add a summary at the top, and slightly customize it for each application with keywords from the job description. I'd also suggest learning SQL (pretty quick to learn) and VBA (I highly recommend this book) by recruiting season. If you're planning to take a third exam this fall, I'd add that at that time too, though it'd be a bit early to list it now if you're currently applying.

Formatting-wise, right-tab the exam dates to match the rest, replace the hyphens in date ranges with en dashes, and add in the missing space before "Passed" in the line for P. I also don't like the header, though I don't know what the best way to improve it would be.

Any of these books, by John Walkenbach, are highly recommended:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=john+walkenbach&tag=googhydr-21&index=stripbooks&hvadid=29164406413&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3796946312755975859&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&a...

Especially: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Excel-Power-Programming-Spreadsheets-Bookshelf/dp/1118490398/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430816791&sr=1-1&keywords=john+walkenbach

Select Case True

If VBAforDummies = http://www.amazon.com/Excel-VBA-Programming-Dummies-Walkenbach/dp/1118490371/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429022801&sr=8-1&keywords=vba+for+dummies Then

MsgBox "This One."

ElseIf VBAforDummies = http://www.amazon.com/VBA-Dummies-John-Paul-Mueller/dp/0470046503/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1429022801&sr=8-2&keywords=vba+for+dummies Then

MsgBox "No, this one."

Else

MsgBox "None of the above."

End If

there is this:

• excel vba 24 hr trainer

and there is this:

• Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

I second the need for Excel and VBA. Then pick up more depending on what you actually end up doing. I advanced up the pay ladder by learning Access & SQL. VBA Resource I agree with your sentiment to just pick a project and start programming. I learned more from trial and error and stackoverflow threads than I did in any tutorial class or reference book.

There won't be any mandatory books for the course, but I will put on the syllabus that a good reference is John Walkenbach's "Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA". I think this book is better for people who already have some experience in VBA since it is very thick an intimidating to the beginning.

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2013-Power-Programming-VBA/dp/1118490398

I started with a 'Dummies' book as a primer followed by ...

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2003-Power-Programming-CD-ROM/dp/0764540726/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1

This book has always been my favorite. Negligible changes between 2003 and 2010.

This sounds like something right out of Professional Excel Development. My copy is at work so I can't check right now but if anywhere would have an answer it would be that book.

Professional Excel Development by Bovey provides step-by-step instructions to build a time keeping program. The CD that comes with it has the final product.

I disagree on books. I had this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2003-Power-Programming-VBA/dp/0764540726

And also this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Excel-Development-Definitive-Applications/dp/0321508793

They do pretty well at covering quite a few topics. I cant say if Walkenbachs more recent books are of the same quality, but I'd highly recommend checking it out.

It really depends on how far you want to go though.