Page 30 - Excel Progamming Weekend Crash Course

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SESSION

1

Microsoft Excel Programming —

Why and How

Session Checklist

✔ The advantages of Excel programming
✔ Fundamentals of programming
✔ The Excel object model
✔ Programming and macros

✔ Designing your custom application
✔ Your first Excel program

ost people think of Excel as merely a spreadsheet program, and with good reason —
Excel is a spreadsheet program. As a spreadsheet program, Excel is a powerful appli-
M cation that provides a wide range of tools for the manipulation, analysis, and dis-
play of data. The majority of users never go beyond using Excel in this way — truth be told,
many users have no need.
Under the surface, however, Excel is much more than an application program. It provides
a sophisticated programming language that enables you to control any and all aspects of the
program. Anything you can do with the keyboard and mouse you can also do with program-
ming. For the power user, programming turns Excel into a flexible development tool for the
creation of custom solutions to your data manipulation and analysis needs. This session
takes a look at the advantages of Excel programming, and provides necessary background
information on the technologies that are involved.

Advantages of Programming

Programming offers several important advantages to the Excel user. As mentioned earlier in
this session, these advantages will not be relevant to all users, but they can apply to a sur-
prisingly large percentage of situations.