Conventions in This Book


Take a minute to skim this section and learn some of the typographic conventions used throughout this book.

Excel commands

Excel 2007 features a brand new " menu-less " user interface. In place of a menu system, Excel uses a context-sensitive Ribbon system. The words along the top (such as Insert, View, and so on) are known as tabs . Click a tab, and the Ribbon of icons displays the commands that are most suited to the task at hand. Each icon has a name that is (usually) displayed next to or below the icon. The icons are arranged in groups, and the group name appears below the icons.

The convention I use in this book is to indicate the tab name, followed by the group name, followed by the icon name. So, for example, the command used to toggle word wrap within a cell is indicated as:

Home image from book Alignment image from book Wrap Text

The large round icon in the upper left corner of Excel 2007's window is knows as the Office Button. When I refer to commands that use the Office Button, I abbreviate it as Office. For example, the following command displays the Excel Options dialog box:

Office image from book Excel Options

VBA editor commands

The VBA editor is the window in which you work with your VBA code. The VBA editor uses the traditional menu-and-toolbar interface. A command like the following means to click the Tools menu and select the References menu item:

Tools image from book References

Keyboard conventions

You need to use the keyboard to enter data. In addition, you can work with menus and dialog boxes directly from the keyboard - a method that you might find easier if your hands are already positioned over the keys.

INPUT

Input that you type from the keyboard appears in boldface - for example, enter =SUM(B2: B50) into cell B51.

More lengthy input usually appears on a separate line in a monospace font. For example, I might instruct you to enter the following formula:

=VLOOKUP(StockNumber,PriceList,2)

VBA CODE

This book contains many snippets of VBA code as well as complete procedure listings. Each listing appears in a monospace font; each line of code occupies a separate line. (I copied these listings directly from the VBA module and pasted them into my word processor.) To make the code easier to read, I often use one or more tabs to create indentations. Indentation is optional, but it does help to delineate statements that go together.

If a line of code doesn't fit on a single line in this book, I use the standard VBA line continuation sequence: At the end of a line, a space followed by an underscore character indicates that the line of code extends to the next line. For example, the following two lines are a single code statement:

 If Right(ActiveCell, 1) = "!" Then ActiveCell _   = Left(ActiveCell, Len(ActiveCell) - 1) 

You can enter this code either on two lines, exactly as shown, or on a single line without the underscore character.

FUNCTIONS, FILENAMES, AND NAMED RANGES

Excel's worksheet functions appear in uppercase font, like so: "Enter a SUM formula in cell C20." VBA procedure names , properties, methods , and objects appear in monospace font: "Execute the GetTotals procedure." I often use mixed upper- and lowercase to make these names easier to read.

I also use the monospace font for filenames and named ranges in a worksheet - for example: Open myfile.xlsm and select the range named data.

Mouse conventions

If you're reading this book, you're well versed in mouse usage. The mouse terminology I use is all standard fare: pointing, clicking, right-clicking, dragging, and so on.




Excel 2007 Power Programming with VBA
Excel 2007 Power Programming with VBA (Mr. Spreadsheets Bookshelf)
ISBN: 0470044012
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 319

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