Latest posts on Excel-Ticker.com (01)
Following new articles have been posted on the English version of my Excel Ticker blog.
- Create VBA Application Objects by using the Windows API
Someone asked in the German Microsoft Answers Forum, if it is possible to get access to an Excel instance and then execute code from this instance. This gave me the idea to enumerate all open Excel instances by using the windows API and then try to access them with VBA. The article describes how to create VBA Application Objects using the Windows API. (...) - Get the path and file name for a file location using formulas or VBA in Excel
I am currently studying some Windows Registry accesses from Excel & Co. A formula in an Excel sheet helps me to split these entries into its components; meaning the path elements and the value. The location where a file is stored can be addressed in a similar manner like a registry key. So, I had the idea to write this article and use my formula for splitting a file location in its path and file name. (...) - Automatically update an image from a web server in Excel
A user asked in my favorite German forum “Office Lösung” about MS Office, if it is possible to automatically update an image from a web server in Excel. The user also posted some sample links and wished that the update should occur every minute. The images from the web server are sent to the browser as raw data and therefore no HTML code is used. (...) - Create and use dynamic references to external files in Excel
Someone asked in my favorite German forum about Microsoft Office if it is possible to dynamically build a reference to an Excel range located in another file. The following solution addresses a range in an external file by using the Excel functions OFFSET(), INDIRECT() and ADDRESS(). Let’s suppose, we have some files which all have an identical structure for the data. (...) - Read and write Excel and other Office documents with PHP
Sometimes, I also use PHP for implementing features for my websites. A very interesting and professional managed open source class library for reading and writing Excel documents in PHP is the “PHPExcel” project which can be found on CodePlex. (...) - Disable the blog post publishing feature in Word 2010
A user recently asked on the German Microsoft Office 2010 Forum the question whether and how the button “Publish as a blog post” can be turned off in Word 2010. This cannot be done in the Word 2010 options dialogue, but there is an option in the administrative templates for Word 2010. (...) - Use own filename for the Normal.dot template in Word
Most of my readers certainly know that, when creating a new document in Microsoft Word, the application generally uses the file “Nomal.dot” or “Normal.dotm” as template. But did you know that the filename can also be customized? (...) - Using wildcards for searching text in Excel and PowerPivot
While I was writing my part (PowerPivot) of an article about Microsoft Office 2010 for the German computer magazine “c’t” (issue 16/2010), I noticed that the DAX function “Search” apparently supports wildcards. However I did not find any explanations for the use of wildcards in this function on the online help website for PowerPivot. (...)
Freezed rows and incorrect display of active cells in Excel 2010
Like in my previous post, I found this strange behaviour when testing some sample files for my next article about PowerPivot in a computer magazine. In some cases, Excel 2010 does not correctly display the selected cell, especially if you are freezing rows. This behaviour does not appear in Excel 2007.
To reproduce the error, you may first create a new workbook in Excel 2010 and store the file. It does not matter whether you choose the old file format XLS or the new modern XLSX format. I created the two sheets „Fixed“ and „Standard“ in my workbook and formatted some cells as you can see in the screenshots below. Please note, that only Excel 2010 in German is currently available for me, but I think, this will be suffisent for the demonstration.
The areas I to IV are containing merged cells. And the pane was freezed between row 7 and 8. If you select cell D2 by clicking with the mouse on this cell, then select the worksheet „Standard“ and go back to the sheet „Fixed“, the selected cell is correctly displayed.
An interesting effect occurs if you click on other cells. The follwing series of screenshots shows this behaviour of Excel 2010. First, I selected area I, as you can see below:Continue…
German translation error for the zoom selection in Excel 2010
When testing the sample files for an article for the well known german computer magazine c't, I noticed a small but confusing translation error in Excel 2010.
The function „Zoom to Selection“ is incorrectly translated to „Fenster einfrieren“ in German instead of „Zoommodus: Auswahl“ (like in Excel 2007). Unfortunately „Fenster einfrieren“ means „Freeze panes“ and this feature is located next to the incorrect button on the ribbon tab. However, when clicking on the incorrect translated button, the right function „Zoom to Selection“ is executed, as you can see on the two screenshots below for Excel 2007 and 2010 in German.
The head line for the help window is also incorrect in german, the help text is however correct.
Since I could not remember whether the error was already present in the beta of Excel 2010, I tested this in a virtual machine with the Beta installed. Interestingly, there, the designation of the functon is correct.
Positioning of controls using VBA, Bug in Excel 2010?
When testing an own developped VBA application in Excel 2010, I noticed a curiosity, which I personally would classify as a bug in Excel 2010.
My application is using some form controls, especially checkboxes which are hidden or unhidden per code. And the cells containing the controls are also hidden or unhidden per code. The error in Excel 2010 appears when following steps are done:
- Hide the form controls per code (Visible = False).
- Hide the rows containing the controls.
- Save and close the workbook.
- Open the workbook again.
- The form controls are now all on top and lost their original positions.
This problem does not appear in Excel 2007. Now, for getting sure that this is actually a problem of Excel 2010, I wrote a small sample application, which positioned 9 checkboxes as shown in the screenshots below. Please note, that I haved used the german version of Excel for the screenshots as the english version of Excel 2010 is not available yet for me. The properties for each control are set to "Move but don't size with cells" (in German "Nur von Zellposition abhängig"). The two screenshots below show the worksheet in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 in the initial state without any influence from VBA code.
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Version 2.00 of the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner
We have the pleasure to inform you that we have released the Version 2.00 Build 150510 of the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner. The new version contains some new features, which can be found in the version history on the download page of the website for the planner www.en.excel-soccer-2010.de.
As we added much more features to the planner and the add-on tool then planned, we have increased the announced version 1.75 to version 2.00.
However, we must unfortunately move the release date of the Add-On tool for the planner by one week to the 05/22/2010. This is mainly due to the following reasons. We would like to add a help file to the Add-On tool which also covers the Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner. Writing the topics for the help file, creating the screenshots and translating the help file to English and French is much more work as planned. Also, we encountered in our tests for the tool some performance problem, which we would like to fix before publishing the tool. Finally, we have not completed all tests for the tool on other systems with the different languages. Thank you for your patience.UserForm design for the Excel Soccer Planner Addon
Today, the second article of my series on the development of the additional tool for Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner. Those who deal with Excel VBA, are certainly aware that own forms or UserForms can be created and be filled with controls. The design of the controls and the UserForm lies on older Windows versions and is - in my opinion - by its appearance a little bit boring. Below is a screenshot of the same UserForm, on the left side you can see the default design and on the right side an alternative variant.
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VBA Add-In for highlighting rows and columns in an Excel sheet
For some time now, I'm evaluating my web server log files with Excel 2010. Yes, there are many other good tools for analyzing logfiles on the market and I'm also using some of them. However, Excel 2010 provides the function to easily import and filter the raw data of my logfiles. Unfortunately, with such amount of data, I'm often „loosing“ the line while reading on the screen. Ok, I can surely increase the zoom factor of the sheet or setup borders for the cells; my wish was, however, to have a tool which highlights the current line or column. As Excel does not provide such a feature, I decided to implement my own tool in VBA. The following screenshot shows the tool in action:
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Custom VBA Tooltips for an Addon for the Excel Soccer Planner
Some of you have probably heard of our Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner for the soccer world cup this year in South Africa; a conjoint project of my friends and me. I had recently announced an additional Excel VBA tool for the planner, which will, for example, be able to import and export predictions from the prediction game or send queries to a web server.
Now I had the idea to involve all interested people in the development of this tool by writing articles, how choosen features are implemented in this tool. I will also present parts of the code and at the the end of this series of articles I will write a post resuming the other posts.
This article starts with presenting a solution how to write custom tooltips using VBA. The following screenshot shows a sample of these tooltips from the options dialog in Word 2010. When you move the mouse cursor over the icons containing a small "i", a text explaining the function of the setting appears.
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Creating UTF-8 XML files in VBA for use in Adobe Flash
My partner - www.designimsinn.de (German) - and me have recently redesigned and implemented an Adobe Flash based CD for one of our customers. This multilanguage CD (German, English and Russian) contains many external documents to the CD interface and stored in several subfolders on the CD. However, the user should be able to access and open these documents directly from the CD interface application by clicking on specific buttons or by clicking on listbox items.
During the project I had the idea to develop a small Excel tool that simplifies the management and generation of document keys, INI files and XML files which may be used for accessing the documents from Flash. This article describes the framework conditions and the tool. Ok, this application is specially designed for our project. However this Excel Tool can be downloaded at the end of the article and the VBA project is not protected. Maybe someone can use the tool with a few modifications for his own projects, or perhaps the code may be useful for study purposes.
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The administrative Templates for Office 2010 and Office 2007
Microsoft offers for several Office versions the administrative tempates, which especially allows system administrators to maintain and configure various settings and options for Microsoft Office in a very convenient way. The templates are can be downloaded for free at the Microsoft Download Center.
So, everyone can use them, for example at home or in the small office. However, if you use them, please do this very carefully. Most settings are explained in the templates and also accessible using the Office interface. However, some of them are only accessible (excepted some uncomfortable registry hacks) via the administrative templates and you should know what you are doing before changing these values.
In this article, I will explain how to use the administrative templates on a local computer and show some sample settings for Office 2007 and Office 2010. If I got some spare time, I will report about more settings for the Office applications in further posts. First, we have to download the adminstrative templates for each Office version and install them. This can be done by just executing the downloaded file, which unpacks the templates to a folder you can choose. The following image shows a screenshot for the folder structure after unpacking the files:
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Comparison of GAMMALN() in Excel 2010, 2007 and 2003
Some time ago, I read the interesting blog post „Function Improvements in Excel 2010” on the Microsoft Excel Team Blog. The reports about the changed formulas in Excel 2010 and about the improvements made to the calculation algorithms for these formulas. I’m not a statistician and I can’t really use all those statistical formulas, but I’m curious and I would like to examine how the results returnes by the affected formulas distinguish in the different Excel Versions. For doing this, I have choosen the GAMMALN() function because this formula just only needs one argument. You can download a sample workbook at the end of this article.
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Creating a rotating image gallery in Excel VBA
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Maren, Arabic on a keyboard with latin layout
Please note that some of the following screenshots were made on my German system,
I hope it would be clear what is meaned.
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The changes to AxisTitle and ChartTitle in Excel 2010 VBA
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Excel Soccer World Cup 2010 Planner 1.50 released
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The changes to the AddIn objects in Excel 2010
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