I just added a poll to the sidebar on the right (RSS readers might need to visit the site to see it). I’d like to know if you use recorded macros or write VBA in Excel.
I ran an informal poll among friends and colleagues with catastrophic results and I’d like to compare results.
Please add a comment to your vote.
I make a lot of use of macros in spreadsheets for my own use, but have problems with macros in spreadsheets for clients as they are often put off by the initial macro warning, so most spreadsheets that I develop for others use do not have macros. It is a pity, because the spreadsheets are much more powerful with a few macros.
My business is based on what I do in Excel VBA. The macro warning is not an issue usually, because the code is packaged in add-ins which are manually or programmatically installed, or in templates which are programmatically loaded.
I use VBA quite a lot, especially for user-defined functions. However, if I am doing work for others I try to avoid them for the same reason that Jay mentioned.
I know that this is an informal survey, but you are likely to get some skewed results from asking this question of your computer-savvy audience.
@Jay: yes, the macro warning can be really scary for many users. Once I had a phone call from a user because he was opening my file and he was getting a message from the antivirus software…
@Jon: could you share your experience regarding the installation of add-ins in a large organization? I don’t have that kind of experience and I feel that it can be a problem (adding it to single image deployments, IT dragging its feet..)
@Tim: I have another informal survey (I’ll talk about it in the next post) and the results are remarkably different… But if the results of these surveys are representative of the blog readers that can help me to improve the blog.
I just followed your youtube post to here. The dashboard you created is amazing. I used Access a lot and I am not very familiar with Excel two days ago. The primary reason to search Excel is for Copy the Charts to Power Point for the presentation. We actually have created PDF reports, but it is not easy for presentation. (I am not sure if there is any other good ways, since the resolution for Inserting PDF as Linked Object in Power Point is not very good.) I have successfully queried MySQL and AS400 database server in ADO. Next step is to get the code for 12 month rolling data. I think I can handle basic Excel snuff in couple of days, but doing something like your dashboard is a challenge.
I will read more of your blog tomorrow. You have raised my interests to Excel.
Lisa
I try a lot to avoid VBA code in Excel. Because,
1. I don’t want the user to see a warning pop-up while opening the workbook
2. The built VBA code should not replace any existing Excel feature (I hate to write my own procedure to replace find / vlookup functionality… or don’t reinvent the wheel)
3. Future versions of Excel may come with different integrated development environment (and, I heared Excel 2010 will not support VBA)
4. Sometimes, more VBA stuff in a workbook means the work goes beyond Excel boundries (we need to select the correct tool for the work)
However, some cases VBA is inevitable. A careful analysis will be required before developing the VBA code.