Calculation errors in Excel can be useful things, as they highlight problem areas in a spreadsheet and help to keep processes running smoothly. The problem with calculation errors, of course, is that they can be a real eye-sore when blatantly visible in the printed copy of a report.
Data validation in Excel is a handy tool. It allows the user to control the specifics of what information is able to be entered into a worksheet. This can help ensure that data is within expected ranges, and that the user enters data that will work in a formula. For example, ensuring that sales are never entered as negative values, or ensuring that words aren’t used in a cell included in a simple formula (12200 + 17090 + “March” + 1820 = …. ).
Sometimes we have a project that requires an internet connection. Of course, before charging ahead and USING the connection, it’s safest to first test to see if there IS a connection! This module uses Windows’ built-in “wininet” to query a website and let us know if it’s available. We use a high-availability one like Google or Yahoo.
The Protect Sheet function is a handy tool which allows users to lock down a worksheet against editing. However, what if you have a data entry sheet where you want to allow users to edit some cells but leave other ones? Excel doesn’t make the process for this very clear, but it is actually a very simple process:
In this day and age, when it comes to selecting software, a greater range of options are available than ever before. Take browsers for example. Think Internet Explorer (I can hear the laughter from here!), Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or Opera. But they aren’t the only options. Ever heard of SeaMonkey? Konqueror? Amaya? How about Flock?
When I hire someone to fill a short-term casual role here at Gravity Computing, I usually make up a simple timesheet in Excel. I’ll use that to track start and end times, and to calculate how much they should be paid at the end of the week. One wouldn’t think of this as any particularly advanced Excel formula – it should be pretty basic, right? But Excel never does this the way I think it should:
We’ve recently completed a project where we needed our add-in to behave differently depending on the security group of the user. For example, if the user was an estimator, the add-in was to perform behaviour X; but if the user was clerical staff, the add-in should perform behaviour Y.
Almost everyone who has used Microsoft Excel has seen the “Macros in this project are disabled” prompt. It’s a mildly alarming message that is thrown up by members of the Microsoft Office suite, warning the user that there is some custom code in the document which could be dangerous. In Excel 2007, the message looks something like this:
I’m a firm believer in making use of features provided to make your life easier. I find it’s always best to start with the basics and learn additional features later on. Since we’re talking Excel, things like macros and advanced formulas can take quite a long time to learn and build, and there’s no point spending time re-making something thats already been done, especially if its done better than your own implementation.
Early in 2010 we started using FogBugz, with the integrated Kiln. In brief, FogBugz is an issue tracking tool, while Kiln is a version control system. Version Control Systems (VCSs) help track releases and allows the ability to easily rollback to an earlier version. Kiln also allows teams of developers to merge their code. To maintain our professional standard we needed a method to track versions and allow rollbacks etc, so we chose FogBugz and Kiln to give us this functionality.
