105.

Overview

After completing this chapter, you will be able to:

• Retrieve data from an external database.

• Create a graphical front end to an application.

• Create an animated logo.

• Change and restore workbook settings.

While I was in college, I spent two years in Japan. Before leaving the United States, I spent two months in an intensive language training program. At the end of the two months, I was reasonably satisfied with my ability to speak Japanese. Then I arrived in Tokyo. For the first two weeks, I was unable to detect any similarity between the language I had studied and the language the local inhabitants were speaking. It was, shall we say, a humbling experience.

Within a few weeks, however, I was able to pick out words, and within a few months, I could communicate reasonably well. By the end of the two years, I once again felt reasonably satisfied with my ability to speak Japanese. And I learned along the way that classroom practice isn't the same as real-world experience.

Learning to write macros is in some ways similar to learning a new foreign language. Once again, classroom practice isn't the same as real-world experience. In this chapter, you'll build a simple but complete Enterprise Information System (EIS) that will allow people in all parts of a hypothetical enterprise to look at orders for the past two years. Creating a packaged application turns up numerous new real-world challenges that you don't encounter when building macros for yourself. This chapter will show you how to solve many such challenges.

Most of the concepts in this chapter have been introduced earlier in the book. This chapter shows how to put those concepts to work in packaging an application. This chapter also introduces a few new tricks that you might need.

Chapter12.xls

 On the CD   In addition to the main practice file Chapter12.xls, this chapter also uses the files  Map.wmf,  Orders.dbf,  Orders.mdb, and  Code12A.txt through  Code12H.txt that you installed from the book's CD-ROM. For details about installing the practice files, see 'Using the Book's CD-ROM' at the beginning of this book.

Getting Started

• Start Microsoft Excel. Make sure you have a blank workbook open.