I recently had the opportunity to work with Phil Shapiro on a book review for PC World.  We discussed OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macro Programming by Dr. Mark Alexander Bain.  The book covers OpenOffice.org's Calc spreadsheet and its macro programming environment. Our discussion is on YouTube, which you can listen to here:

In summary, I am a heavy Excel macro user and have built numerous applications for clients. I am exploring OpenOffice.org applications, both as a replacement for Microsoft Office apps, as well as to see how well OpenOffice users will be able to collaborate with Microsoft users.  This book covers the Calc spreadsheet's macro programming environment.  Overall, I felt that the book was directed toward an intermediate-level macro programmer. A beginner would get a good appreciation for macros and their power, but might be left behind with some of the code examples.

Calc macros can do just about anything that Excel macros can do.  One can write in Calc's version of Basic (OOo Basic) or in Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) - or even use both within one spreadsheet application.  So Excel users don't even have to learn a different version of the language.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very easy and relatively painless to import Excel 2003 macros into Calc and to get them to run. However, Excel 2007/2010 macros don't transfer.  If an organization wants to make the transition from Excel to Calc, and if their spreadsheets contain substantial macros, the move should not be that much of a headache - but they may have to convert to Excel 2003 first. There may need to be some tweaking, but for the most part the macros should transfer.  If an organization has few or no macros, then the transfer will be pretty simple to do.

This book gave me a lot of confidence in the capabilities of OpenOffice applications, since the spreadsheet component is often the most complicated to cross over.  After reading this book, I encourage the move to OpenOffice applications.

The Calc User Guide and other OpenOffice application user guides can be found here.

 A transcript of our discussion is posted on PC World.