trying to learn visual basic

[darklite]

does anyone know of any good resource material for learning visual basic. I've tried the web, but I don't know what I'm looking for. I want to learn how to program access 2003 databases. I bought a book for visual.net but found out it was the wrong thing. Can anyone tell me what I need to begin learning vb?
Thanks!

[nicknameoscar]

Are you saying you want to learn Visual Basic (VB) or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)?

VBA is included with Microsoft Office (Access, Excel, Word)

The one book that ended up helping me the most was "Access 2000 Programming by Example" by Julitta Korol (there is an Access 2003 version as well). To be honest though I had already learned a lot of the basics of VBA and that book mainly helped me to tie everything together. Another book that was extremely useful for me was "Access Cookbook" by O'Reilly Press or O'Reilly publishing or O'Reilly something. Same sort of deal as the Korol book though - it mainly helped me to tie all the basic stuff together.

I can't remember which books helped me the most with the basics. My recommendation would be to go to www.amazon.com and do a search for "VBA" and look for the books with lots of reviews and pick those that have the highest rating. Generally you will pay more for them (in my experience) but they will be worth it. I also bought used books to save money (especially since I was using Access 2000, which was quite old at that time - even older now). The thing you have to watch out for is whether the used book contains the CD if that book comes with a CD. Another thing is use the expedited shipping (usually $6.99 vs. $3.99 I think). It was worth it to me because many times the normal shipping took weeks.

[nicknameoscar]

Here are 3 beginner books that I seem to remember as being good:

http://www.amazon.com/Automating-Mic...120106&sr=1-12

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Acce...4120197&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Acce...120245&sr=1-16

I specifically did NOT like the "Dummies" books and I did not like the "using the Smart method" books.

[darklite]

Thank you so much for the info! So VBA is what I'm looking to do. I'm currently using access 2010, but have found that previous access versions will not open a db designed in 2010, so I design with the 2003 version, and it opens in 2010 just fine. I know almost nothing of the coding and it's time I learned, so I'll check out these books! Thanks.

[nicknameoscar]

You are quite welcome.

I remember there were times when I would get really frustrated. I had to force myself to keep going but, man-o-man, it was worth it in the end. It is so cool what you can do with VBA.

[darklite]

Yes, I can understand that frustration. I had to learn html and css for my job so I could write web codes on my own, and now I have "inherited" someone else's massive db, and now I have to learn vb. Aside from that, it's always really fascinated me and I can't wait to dive into it, but it is pretty intimidating, I'll say that much.

[SteveF]

does anyone know of any good resource material for learning visual basic. I've tried the web, but I don't know what I'm looking for. I want to learn how to program access 2003 databases. I bought a book for visual.net but found out it was the wrong thing. Can anyone tell me what I need to begin learning vb?
Thanks!

Yep, anything .net is not the path you want to travel for Access programming.

As others have mentioned, programming in VBA is what you're really doing, but in addition you may want to look for books on programming in Visual Basic 6. Standalone VB6 is what VBA is most closely related to; Access VBA is probably more closely related to VB6 than the other MS Office VBA's just because of the similarities of using forms, controls, events and modules between the two.

Just remember that VB6 is not exactly the same as VBA; there are differences that can trip you if you don't know about them. Nevertheless, having both VBA and VB6 reference material on hand can be beneficial. Personally speaking, taking a Community College course in Visual Basic programming really turned on the lights for me when it came to building Access projects. It's probably out of print now, but if you can find a copy of Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 by Diane Zak, it should fill the VB6 resource bill quite well.

Steve

[darklite]

Thanks for this, already I'm more armed than I was before!