Question on VBA products

[irfananeeza]

Hello Excel Team,

I am interested in self teaching VBA. I am looking to buy some kind of visual CD/DVD which can help me learn VBA for Excel from the start to finish. I am looking for a method of learning which should be very visual, simple and have easy to follow instructions because I have no prior knowledge of programming. Could you please help me with the following..

(1) With a background like mine is there is somthing that you can suggest.?

(2) Could you please explain what is the difference between
(i) Excel 2007 VBA (Visual Training series) (CD-ROM)
(ii) Slide Your Way Through Excel VBA


They both seem to have the same content and available in 2007 in CD format. Not sure what is the difference between the two. Is one is better than the other.?

Your kind help will be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[mathias.brandewinder]

First, congratulations on wanting to get serious with VBA! Having no previous programming experience should not be an issue at all, I just recommend lots of patience initially: the hard initial step is to get a feel for how to "talk to the computer".
I have no comments on the books/resources you mention, but you should have a look at Microsoft's website, there are some nice (and free) learning resources. This is a good intro to VBA:
Getting Started with VBA in Excel 2010
In general, I like books to learn programming languages, because they give a complete coverage of the topic; you may want to look into some blogs, too. Specifically, there were a few posts recently on the topic "how to get started with VBA":
learn vba to be lean/
getting started in vba/
edit-your-recorded-macro

Peace!

Mathias

 

[hodgeod]

irfananeeza,

Do you have a time frame that you want to create something in?

I was in your shoes just 3 month ago. I used the Microsoft Developer's Network to get started as well as Chip Pearson's web page to begin to understand how to talk to the computer.

http://www.cpearson.com/Excel/MainPage.aspx

I also found it useful to have a goal to accomplish when I was learning. I found that it was easiest to learn by trying to solve a real world problem. The first one I started with was placing an "X" into a cell when the user double-clicked the cell in the worksheet. This was great because it was not complicated, and it really brought home the concept of "object-orientated" programming (which I did not have a clue about 3 months ago).

Also I found that the MSDN learning page was very helpful (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/ms789097.aspx).

Finally, notice the date I joined this board. October 2009 I took my first steps toward learning VBA and I just now feel confident enough to purchase a book/ reference at the local book store.

I feel that the internet, especially this forum, provides enough tools to use to create some pretty neat things and to begin your first steps toward learning programming.

If you have time look what I was able to develop (ftp://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/trf/crash_notifications/cr3_2010.xls) (without the use of any book) in 3 months, with no prior knowledge of VBA. I will preface with I was aware of some excel's formula functions but not aware of its more powerful formulas such as sumproduct and vlookup.

Now the crash form was made for 2003 only, and if you have 2007 you'll have to wait a few days for the 2007 version to be posted.

To really finish this time, I can't think the users of this board enough. The peace officers of the State of Texas have you to thank!

Patrick

 

[irfananeeza]

mathias.brandewinder / hodgeod,

I, thank, both of you for being soooo helpful and supportive. It's sincerely appreciated. I am going to look at the suggested websites you referred.

In addition, I am very encouraged by hodgeod story. Three months was a very short time. I must say that you must be very intelligent guy or VBA may come easy to you. However, I am finding it a bit more challenging.
I really like your adivse to start from something very small like "X" and the move on.

Thanks a lot.

 

[mathias.brandewinder]

Hey Irfananeeza,

Actually I should probably have started with this question, which may help pointing you in more specific directions: why do you want to learn VBA? What is it that you hope to be able to do once you learnt it, that you can't do now?

Mathias

 

[irfananeeza]

Very good question.

Actually, I am using Excel for quite a while for my office work. I will say my Excel skills are somewhat Advance.

With time, I have realized what can be done via VBA with a click is hard to achieve via formulas. In addition, for repetivite taks VBA would be an excellent tool to have. This is my reason of learning VBA.

 

[NdNoviceHlp]

Here' my 2 cents... hope it's OK to join the discussion. Keep reading threads of interest in XL forums. Start your self a folder with some Word docs in it. Name them whatever so as to organize them. Copy and paste code that you like to the docs and you're off to the races. Seems like, besides the logic, the syntax is always the difficulty. VBA will more than likely do what you want if you know how to tell it. A stored VBA vocabulary that you can snip and paste I find is very useful. Also remember when error checking that VBA only does what you tell it. Let the msgbox be your friend (use lots of them to locate the source of errors). Book learnin might help, but doing will likely teach you more. Take up a few project threads and see if you can be of assistance. That was probably more than my alotted 2 pennies. Have Fun with it. Dave

 

[irfananeeza]

Thanks Dave.