Hello All,

I am a novice at vba and I want to learn more. What resources and materials do you, the experts and gurus, recommend?


So far I have relied completely on google. But I know the experts have a short list of websites and materials that help them along the way. Is anyone willing to share?

Thanks in advance.

Hi callasabra,

Most of my Word knowledge & programming skills are self taught, developed whilst helping other users solve their Word productivity issues, so I can't really refer you to a book that I can say helped me to learn VBA.

A book you might find useful is The Secret Life of Word: A Professional Writer's Guide to Microsoft Word Automation, by R Delwood, published by XML Press in 2011(http://xmlpress.net/publications/word-secrets/). I contributed content for and did much of the technical review of this book. This isn't a programming book as such (though it does have some programming in it) and doesn't profess to teach you how to program. Rather, it shows how to combine Word's various tools to achieve whatever the desired result might be. Knowing what a products various tools can do is just as important as knowing its programming language. Another book I contributed to (and has much more programming in it) is Word Hacks, by A Savikas, published by O'Reilly Media in 2005 (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596004934.do). Although it pre-dates Office 2007, much of the content is still relevant.

Do be aware, too, that VBA isn't Word's only programming language. Aside from its predecessor, WordBasic (which can still be used), Word has a field code environment for programming various things.

To see how use fields to do just about everything you might want to do with dates in Word, check out my Microsoft Word Date Calculation Tutorial, at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...ation-Tutorial
or:
http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm#Third_party

To see how to do a wide range of mathematical calculations in Word, check out my Microsoft Word Field Maths Tutorial, at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...Maths-Tutorial
or:
http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm#Third_party

To see how to group mailmerge data with any mailmerge data source supported by Word, check out my Microsoft Word Catalogue/Directory Mailmerge Tutorial at:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/sho...merge-Tutorial
or:
http://www.gmayor.com/Zips/Catalogue%20Mailmerge.zip
The tutorial covers everything from list creation to the insertion & calculation of values in multi-record tables in letters. Do read the tutorial before trying to use the mailmerge document included with it.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

callasabra,

I'm in Paul's camp. Most of my limited VBA knowledge is also self-learned and a result of helping others automate Word tasks. The only book I have ever used and find it indispensable when creating a custom UserInterface (modifying the Word Ribbon UI) is "Ribbon X - Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon."

My collection of tips (mostly related to VBA) is available here: http://gregmaxey.com/word_tips.html

__________________
Greg Maxey
Please visit my web site at http://www.gregmaxey.com/

Thanks guys. I appreciate the direction. You also reaffirm the adage "If you don't know, ask."