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My daughter manages a college bookstore. Their parent company passes around a lot of Excel spreadsheets, and there's apparently a cottage industry in Excel macros among the manager community for reports, conversions, etc. She'd like to customize some of them for her own use.
Stop laughing, dammit, this is my kid here - this is serious!
Can anyone recommend a good book or two on Excel macro programming? There's a crap-ton of them out there.
And yes, I don't miss the irony of the request coming from the manager of a bookstore.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Import these sheets in a DB Server and do something proper with that!
In Word you can only store 2 bytes. That is why I use Writer.
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That's probably beyond her resources and her needs. It would certainly get dad involved for some *cough* free *cough* development and support time, though.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Hopefully @Maciej-Los will drop by
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I can suggest a couple to avoid ...
Excel VBA For Dummies, Walkenbach ... although it does seem rated by other readers
Professional Excel Development, various authors, Addison-Wesley
A guide to the wise ... if the macros have been recorded tell her to start by getting rid of all the unecessary waffle ... all the properties of a cell for example are not required to just change the forecolour.
And anything that says .Select or .Paste needs ripping apart
Edit - this forum has been useful to me in the past ... Excel Tips & Solutions Since 1998 - MrExcel Publishing[^]
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Excel-123 for dummies? (no reflection on your family)
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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Best tip I can give is the macro recorder. Start recording a macro, do via the menus etc what it is you want to do, stop the macro and look at the macro code.
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This is all you need to know:[^]
=========================================================
I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
=========================================================
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I don't think you can consider any business real (no matter the size) unless there is at least 2 people playing a rousing game of "pass the spreadsheet". So I'm not laughing.
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There are also several powerful addins out there that she can buy and use.
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I must admit that this is a new one to me (every day's a school day!)
Year 2038 problem - Wikipedia
Personally, I'm planning on being either retired, dead or both by then, but is anyone preparing for it?
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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I'll be in the 60s. I don't expect to be dead so soon, and I suppose I will still be in active (retirement in my generation is going to be a bit more difficult)
About the preparation... I am going to investigate a bit and if I start something from the scratch, then I'll try to avoid it.
In Legacy mode... I think I will wait to see if it is really such a bad thing.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I'm probably fooling myself if I think I'll be retired by then, to be honest, but death might present the chance to take a bit of time off work!
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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"For example, the bug makes some Android devices crash and not restart when the time is changed to that date.[6]"
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Have you noticed the 2036 BUG in you link?
The Network Time Protocol has a related overflow issue, which manifests itself in 2036, rather than 2038. The 64-bit timestamps used by NTP consist of a 32-bit part for seconds and a 32-bit part for fractional second, giving NTP a time scale that rolls over every 232 seconds (136 years) and a theoretical resolution of 2−32 seconds (233 picoseconds). NTP uses an epoch of 1 January 1900. The first rollover occurs in 2036, prior to the UNIX year 2038 problem.
In Word you can only store 2 bytes. That is why I use Writer.
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I hadn't. Well spotted.
Chaos comes sooner than we think ...
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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digimanus wrote: every 232 seconds (136 years)
Last time I checked, there were more than 232 seconds in 136 years!
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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It would seem that just the OS's will need to be updated. .Net code, for example, is high enough in the programming levels that my code won't care, as long as the DateTime object works in .Net.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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It will be interesting to see how many 32 bit systems are still in existence in 2038. By then, I would imagine the majority of Unix-like systems would have switched to a 64 bit epoch.
Though, even with 64 bit, I guess we'll have to deal with the problem again in the year 292,277,026,596...I might miss that one
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