Changing a file location for 10,000+ cells in Excel - vba

I'm creating a workbook in Excel, and need it to reference other workbooks. I am pulling information from about 30 cells for each day of the year. Each day of the year is a separate workbook. So, I have over 10,000 cells that I need to change if I just copy and paste the formulas for each day.
The reference I have right now is something like this:
='C:\user\data\year\[day.xlsx]Sheet1'!A1)
Where that A1 will be replaced by 30 other cells, and the day.xlsx will be replaced with all of the days in a year. For everything I've tried so far Excel has asked me to manually locate each file per cell.
Is there any way to make this process quicker than manually changing the file name for every single one of these cells? Maybe be able to set the date in the file name to a variable that will link to a cell?
Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you.

To summarize: You want to create addresses in the stated format by string manipulation and then query their value.
There is in fact a function for this, it is called INDIRECT. Unfortunately it requires the source file to be open for external references, so I'm not sure if it is any help to you. I have never tried to open 365 excel files at once.
See also this question on that topic.
If you do not wish to open all the files by hand you will probably have to fall back on VBA (or perhaps JavaScript if you use Office 2016). It shouldn't be to difficult to create a macro which generates the references for you.
Here is a starting point for such a macro:
Sub Makro1()
Dim day As Integer
For day = 1 To 365
Cells(day, 1).FormulaR1C1 = "='[BASENAME" & day & ".xlsx]SHEETNAME'!R1C1"
Next i
End Sub
One more thing: After that your workbook will be linked to all those day-files. As such it will reflect changes as they occur in the day-files. If that is not required it would probably be best to sever the connections and replace each reference with its value. You can do that via Data->Queries&Connections->Manage Links->sever connection (I'm translating from my localized excel version so the exact names may vary) OR you can just copy every thing and then paste only values.

Related

Excel: How to compare sheets from 2 different workbooks for differences

I have an original excel file that I have ran a simulation that inputs financial data. I made a copy of this file, and wired the formulas up differently to try and increase calculation performances.
I now have 2 workbooks, the original and the final. I want to compare each sheet from each of the workbooks together to make sure that the financial numbers have remained the same, to make sure the new formulas are not effecting the numbers received.
I have tried to put copies of the two sheets into one workbook, name them April12 and April15. Then insert a third sheet. In cell A1 of the third sheet, I wanted to use the formula
=April12!A1=April15!A1
to get TRUE/FALSE values. But the formulas in these sheets reference many other sheets that are not in this new workbook, so all of my numbers turn up as #REF.
Iv googled many different ways of approaching this but I cant seem to get any of them to work. Does anyone know a simple way I can compare just the values from 2 sheets from 2 different workbooks to find out if the numbers have remained the same or have changed?
Note:I am using excel 2010.
I think you already know how to verify data using formula so is the problem to refer to a row in a different workbook ? if so, following might be helpful :
=[yourFile.xls]SheetName!$Col$Row
this way you can update your formula like(yourFile.xls refers to the complete path including the file name) :
=[file1.xls]April12!A1=[file2.xls]April15!A1

Alternative to Excel INDIRECT that works on closed files, and links to workbook based on cell value?

I've seen many questions on this forum about linking Excel files based on cell values and INDIRECT always pops up as an answer, and it does do function and fill my sheet the way that I want, but I need to find a way to work with the source file being closed. My problem when it comes to linking, is that the file path to pull the data from will not be known until part of the file name is entered into a cell.
For example, in 'Print Summary' workbook, Sheet1 Cell A2 is where the file name is entered as a number 12345 (and gets auto-formatted to place 'WIP' in front) which represents WIP12345.xls. WIP12345.xls is a form that holds information that needs to populate certain columns across row 2. WIP12345.xls is an order form and completed days ahead. Once it has been approved, the summary workbook is updated with the WIP#.
I did CONCATENATE WIP12345 and .xls to create the file name WIP12345.xls on Sheet2, and I have a Macro that copies and pastes special as value to turn the result into text. But, I can't find a way to create a formula that will take this value and lookup the file to pull information from. I need to pull and fill information from different cells to 10 columns down 43 rows (each row representing a different WIP#####.xls file).
I'm guessing VBA is the only way to go, but I have no idea how to write it. Anyone have a direction they can point me in? I hope I'm coming across clearly.
The free add-in morefunc.xll contains a function called Indirect.Ext, which works with closed worbooks.

Unable to move / delete rows in shared workbook - Not enough resources

this one's a bit of a painful one so thank you for your help and patience with me.
We have an Excel spreadsheet that we use as a master file for our website products. As such there are quite a few sheets and quite a few products on each running along side some macros to provide some extra functionality (turning entered data into HTML for product page, etc).
My issue is that one of our most used spreadsheets has become a trouble in that it has some phantom formatting all the way down to the millionth-and-something row and all the way across, causing the last cell to be the very last cell possible.
The issue that has finally popped up as a result is that we can no longer move rows in, out or around the sheet (a required functionality) as it results in an 'out of resources error'.
I've tried:
Highlight all rows below used range to right-click> delete - Results in runtime error (from macro)
Highlighting large chunks of rows and using Clear All - Resulted in the 38MB file bloating to 380MB
Deleting a chunk of rows at a time - Maxed out at 1,000 before it caused Excel to crash
Moving to new spreadsheet - Broke all our macros (which I did not write and am not proficient enough to fix on a new sheet)
Disabling macros and trying the above options, only marginally more efficient but still out of resources
I'm at my wits end on this one and, while we can continue with most day-to-day functions, we will soon be completely unable to use this particular sheet as we need it at all.
I'm wondering if there might be a way to run a VBA script to remove these rows, potentially one by one? I've tried running a short script that went something like rows[960,1000000].Delete (forgive my terrible VBA markup), but this also resulted in not enough resources errors.
I'm wondering if there's anything like:
row = 960;
while(row<=1048576){row.Delete};
Continuing, the runtime error debug points me to the below if statement within the macro:
If Target.Count > 1 Then Exit Sub
Where Target is the variable passed to the sub.
Which strikes me as very odd because my (limited) understanding of VBA and IF's in general simply recognizes that 'if my selection is larger than 1 (row?), do not run this code..
Thanks again in advance.
Use this method only if you don't have any links into or out of the sheet that will get broken. Also might have Sql connections that might get broken. Might need to disable macros. There are many possible problems with this approach. Use at your own risk.
Note the exact "Name" and "(Name)" of the sheet; Look in the VBA code window at the properties for the sheet. "Name" is the name displayed on the worksheet tab. "(Name)" is the code name visible only in the properties window.
Make a list of range names on the sheet.
Copy the data to a new sheet.
Copy any macros to the new sheet.
Delete the old sheet.
Rename the "Name" and "(Name)" of the new sheet the same as the old one.
Recreate range names.
A better method if you don't have too many formats:
Disable macros and set calculation to manual. This avoids recalculating while doing your delete operation.
Select entire sheet and clear formats.
Delete all rows below your data.
Redo your formatting. Select entire column (not just used area) to apply format if applicable.
It is important to remove formatting on the entire sheet from A1 to the end. Otherwise you'll get the bloat you mentioned. Just that step may solve your problem. If not then proceed with removing all the rows below the data. This should not cause file size bloat.

VBA script to copy specific rows in Excel from a given workbook to a new workbook if specific value is found in a given column

I have been looking for a solution to my problem for the past 48 hours and I couldn't find anything. Keep in mind I have very basic programming knowledge and I might have overlooked something to fit my needs without understanding the code behind it.
I have an excel workbook with a sheet containing all of the data.
It's a list of shipments going in and out of a port.
Now when something is loaded, a "Date Loaded" cell is populated with the date automatically.
What I need for every row that has a blank "Date Loaded" cell to be copied to a new workbook which will be named by the date it was generated (i.e.:031814-PM) depending on the time of the day, PM could be AM.
Now I might not need all the columns to be copied to the new workbook. I need a way to exclude those columns during the copying process.
I want the VBA script to be called with a button that will be at the top of the data worksheet so that when we click on it, the new workbook is generated.

Why do my Excel spreadsheets format my numbers as dates?

We have a lot of automated spreadsheets that extract data, calculate forecasts, publish web pages, etc. It's a really messy system, and I'd love to redo it (with, say, a real web service), but we don't have permission to do that.
We run Excel 2007, with most of the spreadsheets converted to .xlsms.
Anyway, for some reason unknown to me, certain spreadsheets will format certain numeric cells as dates at seemingly random times. As you might imagine, the problem is difficult to track down, and usually I only find out when someone has written a nasty email about our data reading 3-Feb-1901 when it should read 400 (apparently Excel thinks there was a leap year in 1900).
I've explicitly set the cells in question to numeric format several times, only to find them filled with dates a week later.
I've scanned the macros (many are in the ancient Excel 4.0 macro language), they appear to be clean of any formatting changes. All copy/pastes are done as values and do not preserve source cell formatting.
There are no conditional formatting rules in the sheets in question.
Adding a little VBA to format the cells as desired in the Auto_Open subroutine appears to work around the issue.
Is this fix good enough, or in a week will I find the date format is appearing mid-calculation? If not, what is the root cause and how I can fix it?
One thing: I just read from this source that Excel '07 may spontaneously change Normal-styled cells to the format [$-409]m/d/yy h:mm AM/PM;#. Some of my cells that have changed were definitely styled Normal, but evidently not all.
I'm assuming the cells in question are the receipients of copied/pasted data, or external/queried data?
Whenever you add pasted data to a cell in excel, it runs througha routine to determine the best format for anything that's listed as "general" format, even if the source is "general" or "number". Sometimes even setting the destination cells to "number" format does not clear up this issue. But I've found the only way to to get this to work the way you need it to is to explicitly declare the format (in the macro) to the destination range in question before the paste/update/refresh operation.
I also think there's a way to disable date recognition within your VBA, but I can't remember the exact code. Try recording a macro while doing manually importing or performing your update and you should be able to use what comes up.
Edit: just did a test run, and after your connection string and destination add:
.WebDisableDateRecognition = True
That should definitely do the trick if you're pulling data in from an external source and not copy/pasting.
Just in case this helps, i had an issue where excel was auto formating my info pulled from a webpage into DATE format, to fix, in the import window, click options and UNCHECK the auto date formating option, after that, my data imported perfect!