Sheryl,

is there a good text reference you'd recommend?
The absolute best reference is right here in the ng's
and the Google archives.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...t.public.excel

Many of the people who wrote some of the best books
on Excel also participate in these ng's
For a list of books, try he
http://www.contextures.com/xlbooks.html

As for recommending one over another, I couldn't say
as I haven't read many of them.
If you want a recommendation, visit that Google link that
I gave you above, search for "Recommend Excel Book",
and check the "Search only in microsoft.public.excel*" box.
You'll come up with about 1,300 threads in which someone
else asked that same question (and got thousands of answers).

I'm guessing that you may be a newcomer to the Excel ng.
If so, here's a good starting point.
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/newposte.htm
From almost any of the excellent sites hosted by the
"power users" you can get links to just about everything
that you ever wanted to know about Excel (and then some).

Best of luck with your learning,
John

wrote:

Thanks -- I'm going to go check out some of those
tutorials. Also, I don't know any "power users" of excel,
is there a good text reference you'd recommend?

-----Original Message-----
Sheryl,

There is no hard and fast rule as how long you need to
work
with Excel before using VBA. You can start learning both
at the same time.
When using Excel, I'm sure that you've run into tasks that
you do repetitively. This is when the light bulb should go
off and you say "Hmmmm?? I wonder if there's a way to
make
this easier??
That's where VBA comes in handy.
There are also a lot of things in Excel that just can't
be done
without using VBA.
First thing that I'd suggest is to pick a repetitive task
that you
do and "Record" a macro to do it.
Then try running that macro when you need to do the same
task again.

David McRitchie has some links to tutorials about 2/3 of
the way
down on this page:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm

One of those links is to VBA 101 from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=/support/excel/content/vba101/default.asp

John

wrote:

I've been using excel for a while. Except for a class
in
programming "Basic", I have no real programming
experience.

However, I'd still like to learn VBA? How long should
you
have been working with Excel before starting?

Sheryl

.