Professional Excel Development The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications Using Microsoft Excel, VBA, and .NET

The Start-to-Finish Guide to Building State-of-the-Art Solutions with Excel 2007 In this book, four world-class Microsoftreg; Excel developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authorsthree of whom have been honored by Microsoft as Excel Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excelrs"s most powerful new features. Using their techniques,you can reduce development costs, time to market, and hassleandbuild more effective, successful solutions. Fully updated for Excel 2007, this book starts where other books on Excel programming leave off. Through a hands-on case study project, yours"ll discover best practices for planning, architecting, and building Excel applications that are robust, secure, easy to maintain, and highly usable. If yours"re a working developer, no other book on Excel programming offers you this much depth, insight, or value. Design worksheets that will be more useful and reliable Leverage built-in and application-specific add-ins Construct applications that behave like independent Windows programs Make the most of the new Ribbon user interface Create cross-version applications that work with legacy versions of Excel Utilize XML within Excel applications Understand and use Windows API calls Master VBA error handling, debugging, and performance optimization Develop applications based on data stored in Access, SQL Server, and other databases Build powerful visualization solutions with Excel charting engine Learn how to work with VB.NET and leverage its IDE Automate Microsoft Excel with VB.NET Create managed COM add-ins for Microsoft Excel with VB.NET Develop Excel solutions with Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Integrate Excel with Web Services Deploy applications more securely and efficiently

Rob Bovey, President of Application Professionals, has developed several Excel add-ins shipped by Microsoft. He coauthored the Microsoft Excel 97 Developers Kit and Excel 2007 VBA Programmer’s Reference.

Dennis Wallentin has developed Excel solutions since the 1980s through his firm, XL-Dennis, based in Östersund, Sweden.

Stephen Bullen, coauthor of The Excel 2007 VBA Programmer’s Reference, owns Office Automation, Ltd., based in Essex, Ireland.

John Green owns Execuplan Consulting, a Sydney, Australia-based consultancy specializing in Excel and Access development.

Bovey, Bullen, and Green hold Microsoft’s prestigious Most Valuable Professional (MVP) honor.

 

INTRODUCTION Introduction About This BookMicrosoft Excel is much more than just a spreadsheet. With the introduction of the Visual Basic Editor in Excel 97, followed by the significantly improved stability of Excel 2000, Excel became a respected development platform in its own right. Excel applications are now found alongside those based on C++, Java, and the .NET development platform, as part of the core suite of mission-critical corporate applications.Unfortunately, Excel is still too often thought of as a hobbyist platform, that people only develop Excel applications in their spare time to automate minor tasks. A brief look at many Excel VBA books seems to confirm this opinion. These books focus on the basics of automating Excel tasks using VBA. This book is the first of its kind in providing a detailed explanation of how to use Excel as the platform for developing professional quality applications.While most other major development platforms seem to have a de facto standard text that explains the commonly agreed best practices for architecting, designing, and developing applications using that platform, until now Excel has not. This book attempts to fill that gap. The authors are professional Excel developers who create Excel-based applications for clients ranging from individuals to the largest multinational corporations. This book explains the approaches we use when designing, developing, distributing, and supporting the applications we write for our clients. Who Should Read This BookThis is not a beginner-level book. If you do not already have a clear understanding of the core Excel object model and a basic understanding of Excel VBA development this is not the place to start. We assume that readers of this book have already read and (mostly) understood our Excel 2002 or 2 007 VBA Programmer's Reference , John Walkenbach's Excel Power Programming , or similar titles. This book begins where other Excel VBA books end.Owners of the first edition of Professional Excel Development have a different decision to make. Should you purchase the second edition? We have made numerous corrections and improvements throughout this edition as well as expanding it with over 300 pages of new material that you simply will not find anywhere else.In the interest of full disclosure, however, we want to be very clear that the bulk of the new material is aimed at Excel developers who are working with Excel 2007 and Visual Studio 2008. If you own the first edition of this book and your primary focus is developing VBA applications in Excel 2003 and earlier, you will see incremental rather than revolutionary improvements in this edition. We don't want to discourage you from upgrading to the second edition and would welcome it if you choose to do so. But most of all we want you to be satisfied with our work, so we state the pros and cons of upgrading honestly to help you make an informed decision. Excel Developer CategoriesExcel developers can be divided into five general categories based on their experience and knowledge of Excel and VBA. This book has something to offer each of them, but with a focus on the more advanced topics. Putting yourself into one of these categories might help you decide whether this is the right book for you.Basic Excel users probably don't think of themselves as de