I'm also new to VB.. relatively. Anyway, if you are dealing with Excel, u can use VBA( Visual Basic Application) to do that. That's what i'm using now for VB6 developer. But I think it still works for VB.NET ,... not too sure. That's for the code language to look out for. As for the design, Have to think about it... but shoul be easy once you got hold of the language. (At least I feel its easier than the language itself for beginners)