I Wanna Learn VBA!!!

[saross]

Right, I'm determined. I've GOT to learn VBA. Have read various threads on here about books etc. but think a course maybe the best option for me. I did a very short VB course about 4 years ago and have been working from the Help files and Access 2000 Programming by WROX. I know very little about OOP and so find the principles difficult to grasp.

Any advice? I will need to pay for the training myself and attend evening/weekend classes. Will happily take recommendations on a book if anyone thinks it's really possible to grasp it this way?!

 

[MadMaxx]

Being a programmer myself I never really worked much with VBA. I just used Access for storage of data only not for the app itself. I prefer to work with C++ but when I got my IT Admin job everything from previous was done in Access so I had to get back into it. I knew how to program in VBA but as a refresher i used the book called The Complete Reference to Access 2000.

McGraw Hill is the publisher. Has everything including a CD with demos.

 

[MattS]

Check out this thread:

www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51192

I highly recommend Access 97 - Power Programming, by F. Scott Barker. I don't know if there's a A2k equivalent.

I'm running A2k, but find this book invaluable.

HTH.

 

[ColinEssex]

Hi

Learning VBA is a bit like "how long is a bit of string?", you don't know what you want to use and you don't know whats available.

As a purely personal opinion I find VBA books very confusing. (others think they're brill) I too am not too hot on VBA but seem to muddle through.

The best way to learn is by looking at the questions people pose on these forums and then study the answers carefully and try to work out the logic and the flow of the code.

There are really excellent VBA examples here posted by such luminaries as Mile-O-Phile, Rich, Pat Hartman and Hayley Baxter (and many others too), you can learn so much from these postings.

If you see some code that seems useful, I tend to write it in a book for future reference or knock up a sample database that I then can refer to it. You can then try to add bits of code and play around to make it do different things. Its a sort of "what if I do this" type of thing.

I hope I've helped you a little.

Col

 

[saross]

Thanks all for your replies. I had read the other threads but was a bit worried about whether I would be able to wade through a huge book and already use Access 2000 Programming as a reference guide. I guess I'll just keep tapping into these forums, it's just that sometimes it feels like I'm running along about 4 miles behind trying to catch up....

 

[Mile-O]

And what's wrong with miles?

 

[Pat Hartman]

wade through a huge book

- if you find learning by example easier, look at the Access Cookbook and the Problems book that I recommended at the link MattS referred to. Also download the sample db's supplied by Microsoft. Here's a link to them:
http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=172177#post172177

 

[BukHix]

This is a cut and paste from another thread I responded to a long time ago. While this will not teach you VBA it is a good way to get to know the syntax. It also allows you to instantly create VBA from already made macros.

--- begin cut and paste ---

One trick that you can use to help you with VBA syntax is to build what you want inside a macro, save it, right click on the macro, choose Save as Visual Basic Module, hit OK and then uncheck the two option boxes, next open the newly converted macro (under the modules) and you will see the Macro as VBA. For the most part you can Cut & Paste the code right into an event with little or no editing. I still "write" a lot of VBA code this way.

Two warnings about this method 1) Access does not always choose the most efficient way to convert the code. For instance, a object in a form will get converted like this Forms!FormName!FieldName instead of the more efficiant Me.FieldName and 2) If you do all your coding using this Cut & Paste method you will not learn to write out code by hand. It is a good way to get started with VBA syntax though.

--- end cut and paste ---

The method for doing this is slightly different in Access 2K but is similar I think you will be able to stumble through it.