Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA

Book Preface

This book focuses on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the programming language built into Excel (and other applications that make up Microsoft Office). More specifically, it will show you how to write programs that automate various tasks in Excel. This book covers everything from recording simple macros through creating sophisticated user-oriented applications and utilities.

This book does not cover Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), a technology that uses Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C#. VSTO can also be used to control Excel and other Microsoft Office applications.

As you may know, Excel 2013 is available for other platforms. For example, you can use Microsoft’s Excel Web App in your browser, and even run Excel on ARM-based Windows RT devices. These versions do not support VBA. In other words, this book is for the desktop version of Excel 2013 for Windows.

What You Need to Know

This is not a book for beginning Excel users. If you have no experience with Excel, a better choice might be my Excel 2013 Bible, which provides comprehensive coverage of all the features of Excel and is meant for users of all levels.

To get the most out of this book, you should be a relatively experienced Excel user. I assume that you know how to

• Create workbooks, insert sheets, save files, and so on

• Navigate through a workbook

• Use the Excel Ribbon user interface

• Enter formulas

• Use Excel’s worksheet functions

• Name cells and ranges

• Use basic Windows features, such as file management techniques and the Clipboard