Useful Excel links

[Martin Ryan]

Here are some links acquired from JW's blog that may be useful when building an Excel front end for your TM1 application.

Build your own toolbars
Microcharts: Bona Vista or Bissantz (both have free trials, but charge for full version)
Capturing application events, e.g. double clicks
Progress bars so your user doesn't think TM1 has died
Tree Mapper

Some non-Excel but also useful/interesting links
Free PDF builder
A history of TM1
Podcast from Nigel Pendse (author of OlapReport) talking about best techniques for Data visualisation

Please add your own. I may consolidate if the thread becomes large.

[jim wood]

All good stuff. Thanks for bringing that across Martin. (Especially when James's blog is blocked where I work.)

[Steve Rowe]

Not sure if this is a duplicate of the above but below is link to a page that gives all the face ids for the icons you can put in tool bars, although they have been taken from outlook I think it's all valid for Excel too.

http://www.outlookexchange.com/articles ... KIcons.asp

[Steve Rowe]

Useful page containing samples on VBA to modify other VBA, note the warning about virus scanners though, it's a big pain

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/vbe.aspx

[Wim Gielis]

Actually, the entirety of Chip's site is worth looking at...

Lots of interesting material. I always go back to it when I need to work with arrays in VBA (above the obvious work of course).

Wim

[Alan Kirk]

I'll offer up some links relating to some of my former colleagues from my days on the Excel Usenet groups. Sure do miss those guys, but I just don't have time to be on there any more:

Rob Bovey's Excel Utilities is a worthwhile addition to your toolbar: http://www.appspro.com/Utilities/Utilities.htm

Debra Dalgleish's Contextures site, containing Excel Tips. Especially useful for reminders about some more obscure or infrequently used functions like Match, Indirect, creation of dynamic ranges, etcetera: http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html

John Walkenbach's tips page. Legendary textbook writer, he writes almost as well as I do. But gets paid a lot more for it. This page includes tips covering anything and everything in Excel: http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/tips

The MVP Utilities Page which includes Name Manager, a utility that no serious Excel user should be without: http://www.bmsltd.co.uk/mvp/

[alimurat]

Any chance someone can put together a demo on how to implement those progress bars in TM1 9.4?

[knightowl]

^^ yes I am interested in doing this as well, anyone?

[Wim Gielis]

knightowl,

The progress meters by Andy Pope are nice, I admit. But don't forget that:

- using these meters, you execute code, so you slow down even MORE your code execution in TM1
- these progress meters cannot know how long a particular task will take, hence they cannot know where for instance 50 % or x % of the code is done.
You'll have to come up yourself with some kind of measurement. For instance, if you expect that a particular macro takes 30 seconds, you could increase the meter 10 % every 3 seconds. And so on. But how will you know the actual time it will take?
- VBA code for these meters will have to be implemented in your current codes, so you end up using even more code.

Not very appealing, isn't it? Why not a simple:

Application.Statusbar = "my message"
and
Application.Statusbar = False

Wim

[knightowl]

I agree, Very appealing, and very difficult to know how long it will actually take. the Status though can be useful to tell people that it is still running! Thank you