Documentation Resource for Office VBA developers [closed]

Answer 1

Any particular Object models that you were interested in (Excel Object Model, Access Object Model, etc) or all of them? I had a copy of Excel 2003 VBA from Wrox that was pretty decent, they have updated it for Excel 2007 (although I don't believe that there would be a difference between the 2003 and 2007 versions as extending VBA was pulled years ago and there was a push to move to VSTO).

As a general VBA reference, you'd be best to pick up a good VB6 resource, since if I recall correctly, VBA is a subset of the VB6 language. Something like Professional Visual Basic 6 Programmers Reference would be good.

EDIT:

The MSDN Visual Basic for Applications page looks like a good starting point for resources. Here are the Language References

Answer 2

If you are finding the MS documentation, one approach is to make use of the macro recorder. It won't generate high quality code, but if you record the actions you want your program to take and review the code it generates using F1 on any object you want to look at deeper, it can be a good start. You just have to use a little common sense and clean up the macro code after.

Answer 3

Yes, VBA and MSOffice-specific documentation has gone from barely-with-value in older versions of MSDN Library, to now completely unusable shite.

Some idiot decided it would be A GOOD THING (TM) to decouple objects, methods, and properties, instead treating each as an independent, standalone concept. In the good ol' days, you could look up an object class (say, 'Range' for excel), click a link for Properties or Methods to see what p's or m's were supported for that class, and what they did specifically for that class.

Now, all we get is some generic description of the class, no link to it's properties and methods. Properties and Methods are listed alphabetically as their own generic entity, separate from the object classes.

So, there's no easy way, when programming, to find out how to USE an object class. What methods are available? What Properties? What do they do? We no longer know...

Answer 4

I have been working with Excel/VBA on and off over the past two years and have been very disappointed in the quality of the basic documentation. The "help" file is almost worthless. The MSDN version of the same thing is better because it has better internal links, but still quite thin. Here are some resources which I have found helpful:

Writing Excel Macros with VBA, 2nd Edition by Steven Roman. Chapters 5-8 have a decent "tour" of the language (you can find snippets in Google Books):

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Excel-Macros-VBA-2nd/dp/0596003595#noop

The VB 6.0 Programmer's Guide, which mostly also applies to VBA:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa716285(VS.60).aspx

There are also various Excel "guru" consultant websites out there that have a lot of example material. Much of it is pitched Excel in general or to non-programmers, but can still be quite useful for picking up VBA in general. Two such sites in particular are from Chuck Chip Pearson and Charles Williams:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/mainpage.aspx

http://www.decisionmodels.com/

I was about to type a disparaging comment about how I never found a VBA language spec, but I figured I'd Google it again and lo and behold, from only just about a year ago:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd361851(PROT.10).aspx

This might contain the answers to some questions I have resolved only by experimentation and encoding the results as unit tests...