My Utilities Project. Ideas welcome.
I have been to The Xcel Files before but never got to really explore it as deep as it deserves. I did this morning. And suddenly my to-read list doubled in size !! especially those API calls and libraries that can be called and used from Excel.
I think the time has come for me to go down the same route as Jwalk and Andrew and start writing my own set of utilities. It IS the best way to learn and master VBA. I will try to come up with content different from PUP 6 (Jwalk) and Andrew’s utilities… but I realize that my creativity is going to face a very though time so if you have any ideas for utilities that you would like to have but don’t, send me a comment.
By the way, if you don’t mind spending a few dollars, buy PUP 6 with the VBA source code. It’s definitely one of the best learning experience I have had on Excel and VBA.
Hi.
I’ve never seen anyone else’s utility add-ins so I’m probably describing what’s already out there…
Rob.RantMode = True
Calendar: I mean a decent one where you can enter the time and translate between time zones.
(ps. translating time zones is more difficult than you think)
I’ve got a bit of code with the up/down control where you can manipulate years/months/…/minutes/seconds independently.
A Favourites / bookmarks facility: For workbooks, workbook_worksheet, named range, defined range - with a drag’n'drop bucket for captuing.
Favourites can be saved by hotkey and restored by hotkey. eg. CTRL+SHIFT+F1 to Save Range, CTRL+F1 to Restore Range Favourite.
A simple immediate window popup window - with transparency. Nothing too advanced like using : in Immediate window.
Just a simple version which captures the result of a single line command.
Make the Named Range box wider - see Chip Pearson’s posts.
A colour picker - not the “here’s a palette - choose one” picker.
Click a cell for the colour you want. Sort of like format painter.
Faceid browser, one where you can see more than 100 faces at once and collect favourite face ids - not gif screencaps.
VB | Tools | References editor. One with favourites ability - I’m forever adding the same reference into new workbooks.
Sorry for the tone - these are my pet hates.
I was thinking about putting together a personal add-in (personal.xls) for this myself.
I’ll post more as I think about them.
Good luck!
(PS. This comment box could be taller and skinnier it gets lost in the menu)
Cheers,
Rob
Comment by Rob van Gelder — January 31, 2005 @ 12:20 pm
Hi,
“A simple immediate window popup window”
i was thinking about that the other day - would be easy to write, but then i though - why, i use dual screens - but is should be easy… Automate excel has a post with a link to some API for form transparency.
Some things that might make life easyier - Workbook addin manager - make it easier/quicker to load and unload addins - not really vital, but going down a long list can be a pain!
Color pallet thing: I have seen these available commercially, and it’s on my to-do list. Basically I was thinking of something when you make your own color pallet and can save it to disk then recall it for other work books from an addin, not only this, but if you have say a pallet called “green” and one call “red”, you can call green use it, then call red and use that then save the colors you have use into the workbooks pallet – not to sure how I’d do this, but I have a few ideas.
Comment by ross — January 31, 2005 @ 2:49 pm
Rob -
“Faceid browser, one where you can see more than 100 faces at once and collect favourite face ids - not gif screencaps.”
It’s slow and rudimentary, but I use my homemade button face browser frequently. You can set the number of buttons visible at a time, and if you click on any, they are stored in a worksheet with their FaceID index.
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Zips/ShowFace.zip
P.S. Ditto on the comment box: it’s only four lines tall and seems to extend beyond the right edge of the page.
- Jon
Comment by Jon Peltier — January 31, 2005 @ 4:27 pm
Jon,
That’s my new favourite FaceID browser. Thanks :)
Comment by Rob van Gelder — February 1, 2005 @ 1:08 am
[…] Obviously, this now goes into the add-in you created . and will also be part of my Utilities project. […]
Pingback by Excel Pragma » Concatenate with Separators — February 3, 2005 @ 12:55 pm
Rob,
A belated reply on the FaceId browser but I’ve got one on Dick’s site that does what you describe:
http://www.dicks-blog.com/index.php?category_name=downloads/&paged=2
Comment by Doug Glancy — February 16, 2005 @ 3:17 am
I put together an add-in about a year ago.
I put it together rather quickly so the code is a bit messy.
Feel free to take it apart and see if you can make it better.
The password for the VBA Editor is REDNAXELA
The addin is here:
http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/downloads/DATAPIGEE.zip
I’ll put the best effort on my site as freeware and send the person with the best effort a free book:
“Pivot Table Data Crunching” coming out in July.
Comment by Mike Alexander — March 14, 2005 @ 11:02 am