Posts Tagged ‘Excel’
Why doesn’t Excel quit?
Andrei Smolin | November 4th, 2011
From my experience, Excel doesn't quit because there's a COM object left unreleased either in your code or in the code of a COM add-in loaded in Excel. That is, to debug such an issue, you need to start with turning all COM add-ins off... Read the rest of this entry →
How to add PivotTables and Slicers to MS Excel programmatically
Pieter van der Westhuizen | October 17th, 2011
As I've mentioned in my previous article Excel enables us to provide our users with interactive and powerful ways to visualize their data. Pivot tables add another dimension to this by summarizing thousands of records of data in one page and let you analyse trends in your data without the need for formulas... Read the rest of this entry →
Invoking a COM add-in from an Excel XLL add-in: advanced sample
Andrei Smolin | October 11th, 2011
Really often, when I saw an error returned by an Excel formula, I thought about the poor possibilities that this error-reporting approach – a remnant of bygone concepts – provides for developers. The very first time I thought about showing a custom task pane from a UDF was when Add-in Express allowed showing custom panes in Excel; it was back in 2007... Read the rest of this entry →
Thread-safe XLL. How to get the caller address
Andrei Smolin | October 7th, 2011
The implementation of ADXExcelRef.ConvertToA1Style (ConvertToR1C1Style) uses xlfRefText which is NOT thread-safe as per Financial Applications Using Excel Add-in Development in C/C++ (2nd edition). On the other hand, xlSheetNm returning the sheet name is thread-safe. It means that the thread-safe way to get the caller address is to write some code... Read the rest of this entry →
How to use Evaluate to invoke an Excel UDF programmatically
Andrei Smolin | October 3rd, 2011
Whether your UDF is a VBA macro or an Excel Automation add-in or even an XLL add-in, you can invoke any method it provides to the user. To do this, you need to get or create an Excel.Application object and invoke ExcelApp.Evaluate() supplying it with the correct syntax for your method and its parameters.... Read the rest of this entry →
Creating a fast Excel add-in (C#, VB.NET). Reading and updating cells.
Andrei Smolin | September 29th, 2011
This is a known problem: doing things cell by cell in Excel is a slow operation. The Excel object model provides two ways to speed up the code... Read the rest of this entry →
Fast Excel add-in. Checking incoming data in XLL
Andrei Smolin | September 23rd, 2011
When in an Excel UDF you need to check incoming data and replace incorrect values, you can use the modified-in-place argument, the XLL feature supported by Add-in Express 2010 for Office and .net.
... Read the rest of this entry →
How to add sparklines and charts to MS Excel programmatically
Pieter van der Westhuizen | September 21st, 2011
The charting engine for Excel took a leap forward with the release of Office 2007. However, the engine was slower than Excel 2003's version and also introduced a few bugs. Luckily Excel 2010 fixed those bugs and is back to being fast. Sparklines, a word-sized chart has also been introduced in Excel 2010... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Building an Excel RTD server
Ty Anderson | September 8th, 2011
Using Add-in Express you have the tools you need to rapidly start building a Real-Time Data (RTD) Server for Excel. This video shows you to use ADX to build a simple RTD... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Developing an Excel Automation Add-in
Ty Anderson | August 31st, 2011
As a follow up to the Creating managed Excel UDFs video, here is a video that explains how to build UDFs using Excel Automation add-ins. In addition to a solid demo, this video explains the differences between an UDF built with an Automation Addin and one built as an XLL... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Creating managed Excel UDFs – XLL based user-defined functions
Ty Anderson | August 4th, 2011
Creating custom User Defined Functions (UDFs) is one of the most popular reasons to build an Excel add-in. Add-in Express for Office and .NET supports two methods for building custom UDFs... Read the rest of this entry →
How to allow a user to choose target MS Office applications during installation
Pieter van der Westhuizen | July 5th, 2011
In today's post I'll demonstrate how you can customize your add-in setup project to allow your users to select which Microsoft Office applications the add-in will be installed for. I am using Add-in Exprewss 2010 for Office and .net... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Handling Office keyboard shortcuts
Ty Anderson | June 22nd, 2011
For almost every menu and/or Ribbon command in Microsoft Office, there is a keyboard shortcut for it. These shortcuts allow you to quickly and easy execute a command with a key stroke that might take several clicks of the mouse... Read the rest of this entry →
Creating integrated Office solutions with Add-in Express
Pieter van der Westhuizen | June 7th, 2011
Add-in Express enables you as a developer to quickly and easily create, not just MS Office add-ins but also Excel XLL add-ins, Excel Real-time data (RTD) servers and smart tags. In this post I'll demonstrate how you could include all this functionality in one Visual Studio project. Start by creating a new ADX COM Add-in project in Visual Studio... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Advanced Task Panes – extend the UI of Excel, PowerPoint and Word
Ty Anderson | May 12th, 2011
People use Microsoft Office for all sorts of tasks in order to get their work done. For example, they use Word to write proposals, they use PowerPoint to create awesome marketing presentations, and then they use Excel to calculate their commissions. But the thing is often users need to leave Office to go and gather information that they need to complete the document... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Fully-featured solutions for all Excel add-in types
Ty Anderson | May 10th, 2011
Microsoft Excel supports multiple types of add-in architectures, from XLLs to user-defined functions and COM add-ins to real-time data servers. Each have their own interface in Excel and each require separate sets of technical knowledge to use them effectively leaving a developer just wondering where to begin... Read the rest of this entry →