Our application contains many XLAs, containing many forms, modules and code modules.
When we source control our software we would like to check in the textual elements of the XLA and then have a build process that creates our XLS/XLA files, ideally without automating Excel - we don't have it on the build server.
I've seen many components that create Excel workbooks, but have not seen one that can take a workbook and insert VBA and update references etc. Does anyone know if one exists?
Regards,
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I've created an Excel 2010 workbook with a number of sheets. VBA code that performs various data manipulations is in a couple of modules, and also attached to a couple of forms. The workbook is being distributed to a couple dozen people in different departments to use. They will be populating their workbook with their own department-specific data.
If I need to distribute an update to the code (either a bug fix or some new function), how can that be done? I don't want the users to have to reenter or copy/paste all their data into the 'new' workbook - I'm essentially looking for a method to update the VBA Project that's inside their existing workbook.
You could create an additional helper workbook Help.xlsm, that has its file attributes set to read-only.
Move all the vba code, that you might need to change in the future, into Help.xlsm
The file that you distribute then needs a reference adding to Help.xlsm
Now in the future changes can be made to Help.xlsm and they should appear in the client's files.
Above assumes all your customers are on the same network so that you can store Help.xlsm somewhere that is accessible to all their files.
This article explains it better than me:
http://www.excelguru.ca/content.php?152-Deploying-Add-ins-in-a-Network-Environment
You would need to export the modules and forms and manually import them into the existing workbooks. I used to have to do this for some projects i worked on.
Alternatively you would need to write some helper code to import the old data into a newly published workbook, but this depends on how the data is organised of course. Again this is another approach I took for a different project.
You can also do this procedurally. Ive used this for small patches.
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/vbe.aspx
Summary: I have to fill reports in excel and then manually copy the same in doc as required by my seniors to track bugs in different applications. The excel and doc report is different for every application. So I want to save work as I fill a excel and export it in the agreed template in word.
Problem : I am trying to write a macro which will search some variables in pre-defined template (doc) and replace these variables with data from excel. The variables are nothing but some text like <-AppName->, <-AppID-> (self created). Now there is a twist as there is one sheet in excel which has issues marked as high medium and low. I want to export this list to same doc as three different tables marked as high medium and low.
Question: How to populate variables (as above) in doc using the data from excel via VBA? If at all I can populate variables how do I manage to export the data from excel to doc in three different tables since it will have multiple lines.
Thanks in advance.
I haven't gone in-depth to look at this but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
1) Set up your library references in your VBA project so you can access Word's VBA API.
2) In Excel VBA method, set up an array of your search/replacements.
3) In that same module, open the Word file(s) and replace the variables. Like I said I haven't fiddled around with the API so I can't say if you can do this easily...but also check this out.
4) Save the word documents as new files, close them.
I'm not sure what you mean "three different tables" but once you figure out how to find/replace that part should be a breeze.
The managing director at our company wants me to produce an automated monthly document that saves to a certain place on our system so that he doesn't have to manually input all of the data. I have set up so that the document can save to the correct place in the correct format but my knowledge of VBA is not great.
Tackling this from a 1 question at a time point of view I suppose my question would be is it possible to create 1 very long macro that will accomplish many different tasks over several workbooks. For example we have a report that comes from our ERP (Baan) and shoves all of the data into one cell. Is it possible to create a macro that will accomplish formatting text to columns, then copy data from a cell based on a row reference and then take said data and paste it in to a different workbook? Would it then be able to save the workbook all from just running one macro and if so how long will all of that take once the macro is executed?
Yes I believe this should be do-able, keeping in mind that the file names + location remain the same (otherwise you'll have to edit each month). Create different Subs/Functions and call them in one main macro.
The easiest way is probably to do it step by step. Record macro's and see whether that already helps you out and if not use google & stackoverflow for help! :)
it is entirely possible - but in my Opinion VBA is not well suited to the task. The editor is atrocius at best and it is easy to produce highly specific "spaghetti code".
File operatione are possible, but are not nice. Error handling is 80s style with lots of goto.
So if you want to build something maintainable, build an external Application using Interop or epplus (.net package for reading /writing to excel documents) or an .net addin for office.
What is the best way to avoid duplicating code when working in VBA?
I'm used to languages where I can just add an import statement and get access to all a class's public properties and functions, so I can just create a utility class with some common functions and have access to that in any project I choose to import it to. Any time I want to update one of those functions, one edit is all it takes to get it working across all projects.
Is there any good way to replicate this functionality in VBA?
What follows focuses on Excel but I am pretty sure the same would apply to any Office products.
The easy way is to save your reusable code as an addin (*.xla for Excel 2003, *.xlam for Excel 2007+). You then add the addin to Excel and all the spreadsheets you open will have access to the custom functions you have in your addin. If you add specific VBA code to a spreadsheet, you can add a reference to your addin and your VBA code will have access to all the public sub, function and classes of your addin.
In my organisation, we use 3 home made addins - they are stored in C:\Program Files\OrganisationName. And everybody has access to them. When an update is made, we only need to copy the new version to everybody's hard drive and restart Excel and they have the new version.
The addins contain utilities functions such as functions to:
read data from / write data to spreadsheets / files / databases.
usual data manipulation such as removing duplicates from a list
advanced statistical functions
etc.
A few drawbacks:
If you have several instances of Excel open, only one can update the addin, the other instances are in read-only mode
If Excel crashes, the auto recovery mode generally does not save the changes you made on your addin (TBC on newer versions) - there are a few tools to auto save regularly
An alternative is to develop xlls or COM libraries in VB or C# for example, but this is something I have not tried.
There are plenty of tutorials online if you need a more detailed procedure.
I have an Excel workbook that I want to use as a template. It has several worksheets setup, one that produces the pretty graphs and summarizes the numbers. Sheet 1 needs to be populated with data that is generated by another program. The data comes in a tab delimited file.
Currently the user imports the tab delimited file into a new Workbook, selects all and copies. Then goes to the template and pastes the data into sheet1.
This is a large amount of data, 269 columns and over 135,000 rows. It’s a cumbersome process and the users are not experienced Excel users. All they really want is the pretty graphs.
I would like to add a step after the program that generates the data to programmatically automate the process the user currently must do manually.
Can anyone suggest the best method/programming language that could accomplish this?
POI is the answer. Look at the Apache website. You can use java to read the data and place it in cells. The examples are very easy.
You can can solve this, for example, by a simple VBA macro. Just use the macro recorder to record the steps the user does manually now, this will give you something to start with (you probably will have to add a function to let the user choose the import file).
You said you have some data generated by another program. What kind of program? A program that you have developed by yourself and where you can add the excel-import functionality? Or a third party program with a GUI that cannot be automated easily?
And if you really want to create an external program for this task - choose whatever programming lanuguage you like as long as it can use COM objects. In .NET, you have the option of using VSTO, but I would only suggest that for this task if you have already some experience with that (but than you would not ask this kind of question, I think :-))
Look here:
Create Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file from C#
There's NPOI (.NET Framework version of POI) so that you can code in C# if you want.
If you use two workbooks - one for data and one for graphs - and don't update links automatically you can use a macro to get the data (maybe an ODBC connection if the file is in a format it can read - long shot) and then link the charts to the data workbook.
Use a macro to update the links and generate the charts and then send them out and hope no one updates the links.