Book Image

Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming: OOoBasic and Calc automation

By : Dr Mark Alexander Bain
Book Image

Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming: OOoBasic and Calc automation

By: Dr Mark Alexander Bain

Overview of this book

<p>Adding macros to your spreadsheets enables you to add data processing features to your work, automate repetitive tasks, and even create complete data-driven programs that use the spreadsheet as their back end.<br /><br />This book teaches the OOoBasic language and the Calc object model, so that you can manipulate spreadsheets and data from within your programs. You will also see how to create dialog boxes and windows for friendly user interfaces, and how to integrate your spreadsheets with other applications, for example writing spreadsheet data to a document, or capturing data from a database, and using the spreadsheet for generating advanced calculations and reports.<br /><br />Calc is OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet module. Like the rest of OpenOffice.org Calc can be programmed using the built-in language OOoBasic. Both simple macros and complex applications can be developed in this language by controlling Calc through its object model. The book is compatible with the commercial version of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, and the StarBasic language.</p>
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Chapter 10. Using Excel VBA

"One of the biggest barriers to OpenOffice adoption is lack of macro interoperability. In the enterprise space generally the most mission‑critical macros exist in Excel spreadsheets. To eliminate or lower this barrier, clearly will ease adoption of OpenOffice.

MS's marketing would have you believe that OO.o is only useful for a few staff, for taking basic notes. One of [Novell]'s clients using OO.o on their bank, told us "There's only a tiny minority of people who can't use OO.o". And when pressed on that tiny minority — the sticking point was Excel macros, and having re-tested with Novell's VBA macro support, even that tiny minority looks like disappearing."

Email from Noel Power, OpenOffice Developer, Novell, June 2006

In all of the chapters so far, we've seen what you can do with a current version of OpenOffice.org. However, in this chapter we're going to have a look into the future of OpenOffice.org Calc, and we're going to see how to bring that future onto your...