Accelerate Your Ascent Up the Excel Learning Curve

Microsoft Excel is a useful tool that you can use in your scripts to produce customized and even colorful reports. Although many people are familiar with how to use Excel, most people aren’t too familiar with how to programmatically create and use spreadsheets. To make matters worse, the Excel object model isn’t the most straightforward, so the learning curve can look like Mt. Everest.

To help turn this mountain into a molehill that you can more easily scale, I’ve compiled a list of articles we’ve published on how to use Excel in VBScript code. Because Excel’s functionality varies between the different versions, I’ve broken down the articles into two groups: articles in which the code accesses Excel 2003 and Excel XP and articles in which the code accesses Excel 2000. However, although the functionality differs, the core concepts are similar, so checking out the articles in both groups might prove beneficial.

Excel 2003 and Excel XP Resources
If you have Excel 2003 or Excel XP and you’re a novice when it comes to programmatically using it, the best article to start out with is "eXLerate Your Scripts." This article provides the basics of how to use VBScript scripts to produce Excel reports. It discusses how to create an Excel object (or instance), add a workbook, make the application visible, assign values to rows and columns, select a specific cell, move worksheets, and copy data between worksheets. You’ll also learn how to size the Excel window, split a workshop window, size columns, freeze a pane, and use AutoFit to adjust columns in active worksheets. The article also provides a brief introduction on how to customize Excel reports through such measures as formatting cells, rows, columns, worksheet tabs, and numeric values. . . .