Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner [With CD-ROM]

by Michael Vine

Microsoft Access is often used when teaching beginning database design and programming concepts. "Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition," is written for beginners... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592007236
• ISBN13: 9781592007233
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Course Technology
• Length: 371 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Me. They explained and then they moved on. I like it.

I have never used VBA as I have no background in programming. I called in my wife, look at this darling as I made very simple magic on the computer. I have not completed the book yet. I am still working on it, but I am enjoying it. I started at chapter three where the actual programming started and got on with it. I have spent some time reading "Access 2003 Inside Out" so I was a seasoned beginner with Access basics. I do like this book and I will recommend it for people who want to start at the beginning and move on from there. Good luck and good hunting. Traveling HT

Great for beginners

I have tried several books to help me with coding in Access and was never able to full grasp it. This book made the basics very easy to understand. I even found better ways to code in VBA through this book than I had learned from other people that we considered seasoned experts in VBA. I would suggest this book for anyone that has never programmed in VBA and those of you that have been thrown into a position at work that you have to design a DB or taking over someone else's project. A majority of the information can be used in prior version of access as well.

Good Programming, A Couple of Pet Peeves

Microsoft Access is a database program. It has a powerful set of wizzards, forms, reports and the like that almost make any additional programming totally unnecessary. None the less, Microsoft has developed a special variation of their Visual Basic for Applications programming language that runs on Access and which can greatly extend the capabilities you get with Access. The book starts off with a brief (33 page) introduction to Access including how to creat a table, define fields, and make a form. This is a quick introduction. If you know nothing about a database it's going to be a stretch to work your way through this chapter. If you're just a bit rusty on Access, this is a good quick introduction. Then in the second chapter he gets down to programming. I find this chapter a little backwards. The first thing he does is talk about "The Event-Driven Paradigm." And he gives some code: Private Sub Form_Click() 'write code in here to respond to the user clicking the form End Sub Wouldn't it be better to get the reader to writing some simple code, put in some code to be executed on a click and then explaining what he had just done. After this he just can't help from having to spend time describing the object model. Then he says, Don't worry about these details, we'll go into them later. After this, then the programming goes pretty well. I just didn't like this beginning. If you want to talk about objects which have properties, talk about them when you have them on the screen. Don't put in a few pages of stuff unreadable to the absolute beginner and then say don't worry about this stuff. I rank the book very high, because of the way it teaches programming. I just didn't care for the missionary zeal that object oriented programmers have to present their religion first. For the absolute beginner this is writing to impress rather than express.

Mixed thoughts

I have mixed thoughts for this book since so far it has brought me through to learning VBA for Access. I would recommend this book for someone that is already an intermediate Access user that knows all about the Access objects(tables,forms,queries,reports...etc.) and how to create them without a wizard. In other words a person like me that went so far as building a few apps by just using the wizards and macros but needed to add some detailed logic to the next project. That is where VBA was needed for me and this book is great from that prospective. It has held my hand through VBA basics so far, I am almost done with the book now. The book is structured like a course workbook and not a reference manual. There is another catch though... this book is very specific to Access 2002 and not 2000. I was lost for a few pages when I took notice at the screen shots of the properties menus and seen them in Access 2002. I was fortunate enough to have had Access 2k and 2002 to see the difference so watch for that. I also recommend "Mastering Access 2000 Development" by Alison Balter ISBN:0-672-31484-3 I just picked that one up and that one is fantastic and would go well after you get through this one. Over all I think that this book does do what it intends, to teach VBA basics but maybe it should be renamed to Microsoft Access VBA Programming for the Absolute VBA Beginner. An absolute beginner to Access would probably not know Access well enough to understand this level of book. I do recommend it as a good short course for begining VBA basics.