Am novice in VB, I've programmed in fortran, SAS, cobol etc...

Q1) recommendations on Visual Basic books ("geared" to Excel?)

Background for Q's below:
for some, but not all worksheets in a workbook:
data in columns b and d are related.
I want to 'format' d2 based on the value of b2.
user will enter b2 first. about seven values will be valid.
e.g. b2=3, (text format), original value of d2: blank, user enters:
1234 (as text)
I want d2 to look like: [1234]
am currently using =concatenate("[",d2,"]")

Q2) How do I get code to excecute only on worksheets that I want?
I will 'know' some of the worksheets names, but not all.
I suppose I can direct the user to put a specific value into 1
specific cell as a something to check for this decision. Other ideas?

Q3) it appears from other notes that
private sub worksheet_change()
my code
end sub
is the lowest level of event change and will be where I put my code.
True?

Q4) how do I show an simple error msg when b2 contains a bad value and
prevent further data entry? a blank or null cell is a valid value.
(I am familiar with if ... then .... else syntax)

Q5) Don't know if this will be beyond my very near term skill level,
but, in a perfect world, for some of the values in b2, I'd like to place
what the user enters in d2 inside a 'graphic'.
e.g. if b2 = "4" then put 1234 'inside' an oval.
the oval and the 1234 inside it would have to fit within the
boundaries
of the d2 cell.

Whew! and thanks so much. Neal

Neal Z