Excel User Group
Microsoft Excel blogs, forums, files. Read, ask questions, provide answers.

Nick Hodge's Excel Blog

Sort By: Most Recent | Most Viewed | Most Commented

  • Summit in Seattle

    It's been some time since I posted a blog post and this is a little lame when it comes to Excel, but we are all (MVPs) in Seattle at the Global Summit this week and if there is anything we are allowed to post under our NDAs I will try and post it here. Never know until we get there what will be allowed public domain and we have to be real careful, but I will certainly be pointing the Excel Team to the v.Next forum if you still have some ideas for that. Looking forward to a great week at the 'Excel...
    Filed under:

  • Playing with OpenAsTextStream

    We produce individual text files for new items to go into our catalogue. These are sent to the creative people for laying out on the page. One file contains the Item#, Description, Text and Bullets for one item and is named with that item's number. Of course, for page layout it is good for them to copy and paste the text this way. It looks as below: 12345E 2500PSI 15LPM Petrol-Powered Pressure Washer This pressure washer, powered by a Honda GX160 engine, will blast away even the most stubborn...

  • Questions on customising the ribbon

    I have, via the blog contact form received three questions from Milan, these were Can you remove the Office Button? Can you link a combobox (on the ribbon) to a cell/range? Can you link a label (on the ribbon) to a cell? The answer to No.1 was answered in the 2nd of my series on customising the ribbon. In the section under Full Dictator Application. No. 2 is yes you very much can but it is not a simple process like having a 'link' property or similar. The write-up below demonstrates how you...

  • Maybe faulting add-ins are a thing of the past?

    I was intrigued to see, under the threat from competition commissions around the World, that Microsoft are opening up parts of their code-base and engineering to competitors to make the whole operating system and main applications (Office is mentioned), work better with 3rd party products. I for one hope people like Adobe gets involved with this as a good proportion of the posts in the public GrashesGPFs group on MSFT's servers, relates to faulting add-ins opening with Excel. Hopefully good news...
    Filed under: ,

  • Ribbon, Step-by-Step. Part 4 (Exploring Other Controls)

    So we've explored the file formats, created the shell for a dictator application, made some basic ribbon, tab, group and control changes and customised the Office menu. We've re-purposed some Microsoft controls to our own use and now we will be running at pace through some of the other controls available to you. I doubt we will cover all of them, but you can download a bunch of my files here , which demonstrate more of what you are learning here and also contain a 'popular' control...
    Filed under: , ,

  • Ribbon, Step-by-Step. Part 3 (The Office Menu and Re-purposing)

    In our first two parts we covered the file structure of Excel 2007 and some very simple customisations which, in the main, do not require any VBA code. in this part we are going to try and accomplish two things. Customisation of the Office Menu (under the office button) Re-purposing built-in controls to do other things. In the next one or two parts we will cover more details on the various controls, including Galleries and Contextual tabs and then how we can capture the ribbon object and change controls...
    Filed under: , ,

  • Ribbon, Step-by-Step. Part 2 (Begin Customisation)

    In the last part of this series , we went through the different file formats as a precursor to starting Ribbon customisation. You should by now have downloaded the Office 2007 Custom UI Editor , as this is the tool we will be using to customise our RibbonX and generate callbacks for VBA. We'll start with a run down of the tool itself. Remember, you need to have the .Net 2.0 framework, or above loaded on your development machine. The Office 2007 Custom UI Editor Without worrying too much about...
    Filed under: , ,

  • Ribbon, Step-by-Step. Part 1 (File Formats)

    I am going to endeavour to enthuse some more people into development of the new ribbon in Excel 2007 (well other applications too, but I will use Excel throughout). You will need a knowledge of XML and VBA, as these are the two technologies I will be using. I suspect it will take about 4 or 5 'sessions' to get up to some kind of understanding and I intend to cover the following: File Formats Dictator Applications Custom Tabs and the Office Menu Using Built-In Groups and Controls Using Custom...

  • Removing The Macro Security Warning

    Many times after macros have been recorded or written users want to remove them as they are no longer required, but they cannot get rid of the 'macro warning' pop-up that appears each time the workbook is open, (see below). (You should only follow these instructions if you have no further need for the macros or UserForms!) . Excel has the ability to put code in three places, ( see here ). If the code is in a standard module the key to stopping the dialog is to remove the entire module(s)...
    Filed under:

  • Importing Data with Parameters (ODBC)

    Using Parameters In External ODBC Data Queries Here we can demonstrate the linking of data in an external data source with Excel, using the values in cells to determine the data presented, using parameterised data queries. Open a workbook and on the active sheet in cells A1 enter Start Date and in B1 enter the date 01/01/2003. In A2 enter End Date and in B2 enter the date 02/02/2003. Take the menu options Data>Import External Data>New Database Query... You will fire from here a dialog asking...

  • Good publicity

    Via an MVP Lead at MS, we have got some very decent publicity, both here and in next month's edition of the Office Newsletter Good news and likely to increase traffic quite a bit

  • Video Files

    Just as a test, I have uploaded Part 1 of a set of videos dealing with Pivot tables in Excel 2007. This first one simply takes you though the new interface, using external data and shows some of the new features, like context-sensitive sorting and filtering, compact view, data connection management and live preview for themes. I hope to build this over time as a complete practicle reference on building Pivot Tables and it's features and benefits as I find them in my daily life. Hope you like...
    Filed under: ,

  • Reset Excel's UsedRange

    If you are frustrated by your scrollbars racing way passed your last row, or they are difficult to control, it is likely Excel thinks it has more data than it actually does and you need to reset it's UsedRange. All versions of Excel have an 'issue' with resetting the area it believes it is using on any sheet (UsedRange). This is brought about by say, entering data in columns to the right of the actual data or rows below it. To test where Excel believes it's furthest row or column...
    Filed under:

  • Open Excel how YOU want

    Start-up templates in Microsoft Excel...
Copyright Excel User Group and the relevant contributors, 2008. All Trade Marks acknowledged. This site is a peer-to-peer site and NOT affiliated in any way to Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved.