I must admit that I'm a bit baffled by some of the other reviews I have read of this title. This is, quite frankly, a superb book -- although perhaps not suitable for absolute beginners.I have programmed in several other languages, but have only lately had the need to attack VBA for some projects at work, and found Word's online help frustratingly incomplete. This book's strength is that it complement's the online help and provides a deeper insight into how VBA "thinks." Other readers apparently were looking for more of a cookbook, with lots of full-figured, prewritten code, but I found that the code examples in the book, though short, provided *immediate* solutions to some problems I was facing in the code I was writing, and were sufficiently modular to be easily played-with and adapted to what I was doing. I also found another reviewer's accusation of bloat and padding in the book to be very much off the mark -- the density of useful information on a typical page of this book is much higher than in many computing titles I've read.
Bottom line: anyone with some background coding in other languages, who finds themself in the position of having to solve problems in the Word macro environment, should snap this book up at the bargain price. [An added kudo for Amazon.com: I ordered this book (admittedly with second-day shipping) from Amazon.com on Thursday afternoon, and had it in my office the next morning. That excellent order-fulfillment performance proved particularly valuable for me on this go-round!]
Having read/studied "Writing Word Macros" authored by Steven Roman, I've been able to discern more accurately the meaning behind the phrase, "it's all Greek to me". If it was my intent upon having read through this manual to then be able to compose macros for the MSWord program, then the purchase of this manual was a serious waste of time, mental energy and money.
I would hate to think that my life and/or my employment stability could be based upon what I was able to garner from having read this book from cover to cover. Needless to say, I would be simultaneously unemployed and "laid out" prior to either burial or cremation, at the funeral home of my choice.
I am not more equipped to construct a simple [or complex] macro from having read through this manual than I would be able to submit a resume touting myself as a "rocket scientist."
I believe that the author would have been more in keeping with what was expected of this manual if he had included more actual, usable examples and/or exercises. I haven't any greater idea as to how to actually apply what I've read to anything that even comes close to being practical with regard to the use of VBA or MSWord macros.
I equate having read through "Writing Word Macros" with having initiated the reading of a novel or the watching of a motion picture with the thought in mind of seeing it through until the end in the hopes of, at the denouement, eventually enjoying the fact of it somehow coming together and making some semblance of understanding.
I hesitate to even think of how "utterly in the dark" I would currently be had I not recently finished a 20 hour course on Visual Basics at my local community college.
At this juncture, I would rather take my chances with one of the manuals alluded to by Mr. Roman in his introduction as "...very slow paced, primarily by padding them heavily with overblown examples and irrelevant anecdotes..." or one of the "monstrosities" that programming manuals are apt to be, and walk away having a sense of having learned something, than to have spent the time, energy and money on a book where the end result was simply and unequivocally "huh?"
For me, from this point on, it's either a "Fill In The Blank for Dummies" or a third party, albeit monstrous tome, published by Que or Sybex. This is, without a doubt, my first and last purchase of any book either authored by Mr. Roman and/or published by O'Reilly Publishing.
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