Reno
If you are going to learn VBA you will need to decide which Office
application you use most to start with, or it will become bewildering. VBA
syntax is the same across all applications, but the objects are application
specific, Excel has Range, Word has Paragraph, Powerpoint has Slides...etc.
The overall syntax is the same as VB also, but VB has no application
specific objects (VB.Net has VSTO which 'helps' to integrate the two).
Where to learn depends on what you decide. If you want advice on VBA in
excel (All other apps are only add-ins to excel anyhow ;-)). Hang out in the
Excel.programming newsgroup and take a look at Bovey,Bullen,Green's new book
Professional Excel Development. (If you want to start lower than that book,
I started with Excel VBA step-by-step from MS press which builds a nice
understandable application.
With VBA it will be essential for you to understand, in reasonable depth in
advance, the application(s) you choose, or it will be very difficult to
navigate to the object you need.
Again, in Excel, recording with the macro recorder (Tool>Macros>Record new
macro...) is a very good place to start. The code produced is very lengthy
and records all the properties of each object no matter whether they are
needed or not. It also 'Selects' and then works on the 'Selection' which is
not necessary in excel and slows code. Once you have recorded code, it can
be viewed in the VBE (Visual Basic Editor), accessed by pressing Alt+F11 and
looking in the modules below the project in the project explorer.
Just my £0.02
--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
[email protected]