visual basic

Thanks for the reply. I was originally looknig for some online documentation, and was hoping I could find some, but came up sadly empty-handed.

So last week I went to my local B&N and picked up exactly that book, "Writing Excel Macros with VBA 2nd edition," by Steven Roman (O'Reilly).

Now it should be noted that the book was not writen around my purpose. I am looking at programmatically controlling Excel objects from within the VB programming environment (Vis Stud 6 and ASP). However, this book seems to have been written for someone who wants to program VBA from within Excel.

I took a chance and got the book anyway and, thankfully, the objects I need to work with are decently documented. I don't give my highest praises to the book on documenting the Excel Objects, but it is clearly not the fault of the author, Steven Roman. From reading the book it is clear he had little in the way of docs to work with when compiling his material. To his credit he falls short of throwing up his arms in depair, but quotes like:

"Unfortunately, neither of these methods is sufficiently documented, so some experimentation is in order."

are peppered throughout the book (I have not read the whole book, just the latter half concerning the Excel object documentation).

I am hoping this book gives me what I need.

Dave

I have to say I'm very disappointed with the book. I usually expect great things from Oreilly books and this one fell short. It's an ok reference, but it's not big enough to be a complete reference. It tries to cover a lot of ground and ends up not doing each topic justice. There just isn't enough info on each topic.

It seems like it'd be great if you're already an expect macro writer and just need a reminder about what certain functions do. If that's not you, then this book is probably not for you.

OK... I can hear it now... What are we doing reviewing Microsoft application books in a Notes/Domino context? Trust me, it actually makes sense here. Read on...

This book is a refreshing change from the 1000+ page manuals you often see when you are looking for a technical reference book. The author's philosophy is such that he doesn't resort to handholding, nor does he try to explain every last nuance of an application. Instead, he gives a concise explanation of the material, and builds upon the information as you go. When you are done with the material, you should have the basic knowledge you need to be productive immediately, as well as the tools you need to delve further into VBA and Excel programming.

The first part of the book shows you the editing environment used to program Excel. Once you have that down, he explains the basics of VBA. VBA, or Visual Basic For Applications, is a subset of the Visual Basic language, and is well suited for scripting activities within an application object model. Once you understand all that, you start putting that newly acquired information to work by creating Excel applications that allow you to automate functions within Excel.

OK, now back to the Notes/Domino world. Why do you need to know anything about Excel and how to program it? It depends if you want to really want to extend the power of Notes. With LotusScript, you can create an Excel object in code using COM technology. Once you have the Excel object declared, you could use LotusScript to start manipulating the properties and methods of all the Excel objects. So for instance, you could build an agent that would read all the documents in a view and create a simple Excel spreadsheet without having the user work through the cumbersome view export menu option. Or to be more impressive, you could use the Excel object model within LotusScript to create monthly reports with all the formatting you would normally do manually within Excel. This keeps the user from having to manually transfer data from one application to another.

So why this book? To effectively program LotusScript and Excel, you MUST understand the object model of the application. If you don't understand the object hierarchy of Excel, it makes it nearly impossible to do anything more than the simplest of tasks. The author does a great job of explaining the different objects in Part 3 of the book. While not all of the objects are applicable to your Notes/Domino programming, most of the material will give you the information you need to understand where to start and to figure out what is possible.

Conclusion
I recommend this book to any Notes/Domino developer who wants to create applications that interface with Excel. Other books concentrate too much on how to work with Excel as an application. This book gives you the tools you need to work with Excel as a programmable tool.