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Learning Word Programming Offers Solid Advice for Creating Word Macros

November 6, 1998

Sebastopol, CA--"People ask ' Why would anyone want to program Microsoft Word?" says Dr. Steven Roman, author of the just-released Learning Word Programming, "The answer is simple: to get more power out of this formidable application."

Roman's no-nonsense book (Learning Word Programming, O'Reilly, $27.95) delves into the core aspects of VBA programming, enabling users to increase their productivity, streamlining or automating any number of tasks-- particularly repetitive tasks . It takes the reader step-by-step through writing VBA macros and programs, illustrating how to generate tables of a format, manage shortcut keys, create fax cover sheets, and reformat documents.

Learning Word Programming provides Word users who are not programmers, as well as programmers who are not familiar with the Word object model, with a solid introduction to writing VBA macros and programs. In particular, the book focuses on:

  • The Visual Basic Editor and the Word VBA programming environment. Word features a complete and very powerful integrated development environment for writing, running, testing, and debugging VBA macros.

  • The VBA programming language (which is the same programming language used by Microsoft Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, as well as the retail editions of Visual Basic).

  • The Word object model. Word exposes nearly all of its functionality through its object model, which allows Word to be controlled programmatically using VBA. While the Word object model, with almost 200 objects, is the largest among the Office applications, readers need be familiar with only a handful of objects. Learning Word Programming focuses on these essential objects, while still discussing other, less-commonly used, objects.

About the Author:

Steven Roman is a Professor of Mathematics at the California State University, Fullerton. He has taught at a number of other universities, including MIT, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of South Florida. Dr. Roman is the author of over 30 books, including Coding and Information Theory, Advanced Linear Algebra, and Field Theory, Access Database Design & Programming, Concepts of Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic, Understanding Personal Computer Hardware. He is currently working on Developing Visual Basic Add-Ins to be published by O'Reilly.

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