Kurzbeschreibung
Synopsis
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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.
Über den Autor
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Chapter 1: Introduction
About This Book
Microsoft Excel is much, much more than just a spreadsheet. Since the introduction of the Visual Basic Editor in Excel 97 and the improved stability of Excel 2000, it has become a respected development platform in its own right. Applications written using Excel are now often found alongside those written using Visual Basic, C++, Java, .NET, etc, as part of many corporations' core suite of business-critical applications. Indeed, Excel is often used for the client end of web-based applications, made particularly easy with Excel 2003's XML import/export features.
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.
The Excel Developer
Excel developers can be divided into five general categories, based on their experience and knowledge of Excel and VBA. To varying degrees, this book has something to offer each of them, but with a focus on the more advanced topics. Putting yourself into one of these categories might help you decide whether this is the right book for you.
The basic Excel User probably doesn't think of themselves as a developer at all. To them, Excel is no more than a tool to help them get on with their job. They start off using Excel worksheets as a handy place to store lists or perform simple repetitive calculations. As they discover more of Excel's functionality, their workbooks become more complex and start to include lots of worksheet functions, pivot tables and charts. There is little in this book for these people, though Chapter 4 – Worksheet Design details the best practices to use when designing and laying out a worksheet for data entry, Chapter 14 – Data Manipulation Techniques explains how to structure a worksheet and which functions and features to use to manipulate their lists and Chapter 15 - Advanced Charting Techniques explains how to get the most from Excel's chart engine. Using the techniques suggested in these chapters should help the basic Excel user avoid some of the pitfalls often encountered as their experience and the complexity of their spreadsheets increases.
The Excel Power User has a wide understanding of Excel's functionality, knows which tool or function is best to use in a given situation, creates complex spreadsheets for their own use and is often called on to help develop their colleagues' spreadsheets or to identify why their colleagues' spreadsheets don't work as intended. Occasionally the Power Users includes small snippets of VBA they found on the internet or created using the macro recorder, but struggles to adapt the code to their needs. As a result, they produce code that is untidy, slow and hard to maintain. While this book is not a VBA tutorial, the Power User has much to gain from following the best practices we suggest for both worksheets and code modules. Most of the chapters in the book will be relevant to the Power User who has an interest in improving their Excel and VBA development skills.
The VBA Developer makes extensive use of VBA code in their workbooks – often too much. They are typically either Power Users who have started to learn VBA too early or Visual Basic 6 developers that have switched to Excel VBA development. While they may be very proficient at VBA, they believe every problem must have a VBA solution and lack sufficient knowledge of Excel to make the best use of its features. Their solutions are often cumbersome, slow and make poor use of Excel's object model. This book has much to offer the VBA Developer to improve their use of Excel itself, including explaining how to architect Excel-based applications, the best practices for designing worksheets and how to use Excel's features for their data entry, analysis and presentation. The book also seeks to improve their Excel VBA development skills by introducing advanced coding techniques, detailing VBA best practices and explaining how to improve their code's performance.
The Excel Developer has realized the most efficient and maintainable applications are those which make the most of Excel's own functionality, augmented by VBA when appropriate. They are confident developing Excel-based applications for their colleagues to use or as part of an in-house development team. While their undoubted knowledge of Excel is put to good use in their applications, it also constrains their designs and they are reluctant to use other languages and applications to augment their Excel solutions. They have probably read John Walkenbach's Excel 97/2000/2002/2003 Power Programming and/or our own Excel 2000/2002 VBA Programmer's Reference and need a book to take them to the highest level of Excel application development – that of the professional developer. This...
