Bacon Bits:

Excel New Year Resolutions

datapig — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:26:30 +0000

Well folks, it’s officially the year 2012. And even though the Mayans have put a stigma on 2012 with all their “end of the world” mumbo jumbo, I’m very excited about the upcoming year.

This is the time for new-year’s resolutions. I was going to put down “stop procrastinating” on my list, but I never got around to creating it.

If you too have yet to create your list of new-year’s resolution’s, here are a few Excel resolutions you can adopt for 2012.

Stop emailing workbooks called Book1.xls
Stop using Merge and Center
Stop hiding cell content using White font
Start making your workbooks Print-ready, so we don’t print 25 blank pages when we print it
Stop printing Excel eye charts with 8 pitch font

Feel free to add your own. Happy New Year!

No related posts.

Running a SQL Stored Procedure from Excel with Dynamic Parameters

datapig — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:37:11 +0000

In my life-changing post, Running a SQL-Stored Procedure from Excel, I showed you how to make Excel interact with a SQL server Stored Procedure.

Since that post, I've had several requests to cover the topic of passing dynamic parameters to a Stored Procedure. So today, I will FINALLY show you.

Step 1: Data tab – > From Other Sources -> From SQL Server

Step 2: Enter Credentials.

Step 3: Choose any small table or view. It doesn't matter which one because we'll be changing the connection anyway.

Step 4: In the Data Connection Wizard dialog, give your connection a friendly name that you can remember. This is how you'll point to this connection in VBA. In this case, I'm calling this connection MYSERVER.

Step 5: Excel will pop up the Import Data dialog box - Click Properties here (NOT THE OK BUTTON).

Step 6: Click on the Definition tab. Here, you'll want to change Command Type to SQL, and then enter your Stored Procedure name in the Command Text input. As you can see, the SQL statement is simply a call to the Stored Procedure along with the Parameter name (in this case, the procedure is expecting one parameter that accepts a market name).

Step 7: Excel warns you about something unimportant - Click Yes (which in this case, means go away).

Step 8: Excel will activate the Import Data dialog box again. This time click OK to fire the Stored Procedure and return the results.

Step 9: Note the results you get from your original hard-coded command you entered in Step 6. At this point, you know your connection is working.

Step 10: Create a mechanism to dynamically select and enter your parameters.

In my case, I need to pass a market name to my Stored Procedure. So I added a simple dropdown where my selection goes to Cell B2. The mechanism you choose to select your parameters is not the important thing here. The important thing is to note where the final selection will be housed. In this example, my market selection will end up in Cell B2.

Step 11: The final step is to copy and paste this Macro into a standard module. Notice that all we are dong here is changing the definition fo the CommandText property of the Connection. This basically means that as long as you can point to the correct connection (MYSERVER in this case), you can rebuild the CommandText on the fly. Here, I'm rebuilding the CommandText to point to my chosen cell range (cell B2 - where my market selection is housed).

PLAIN TEXT

Visual Basic:

Sub RefreshQuery()
With ActiveWorkbook.Connections("MYSERVER").OLEDBConnection
.CommandText = "EXECUTE dbo.Tng_Market_Feed '" & Range("B2").Value & "'"
End With
ActiveWorkbook.Connections("MYSERVER").Refresh
End Sub

At this point, it's just a question of firing the Macro each time your parameter selection changes.

Now you're cooking with gas!

Buying Apps on Your Smart Phone

datapig — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:01:29 +0000

On this Friday, I'd like to share another life lesson from The Oatmeal:

No related posts.

Open CD Rom – The Most Useless API Call

datapig — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:24:14 +0000

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was ignoring the family and puttering around on the internet. There, I found a list of all the cool API calls you can do through VBA. An API call is essentially a piece of code you can use to make the Windows operating system do things – like open a directory, freeze the system, open a dialog box, etc.

Well, there is an API Call that essentially opens your CD Rom drive. That's right – you can implement code so you don't have to go through the painstaking task of pressing the Open button for your CD Rom drive. Wow …. AUTOMATION IS THE BEST!

OK…this gets my vote for the most useless API call. Second place is the API call to close the CD Rom Drive.

That being said, you could use this useless API to prank your coworkers.

The trick is to implement the Open CD Rom API call so that every time they open Excel, the CD Rom pops so life. Definitely good for weeks of annoyance and confusion.

Step 1:

Go to their computer and navigate to the Visual Basic Editor in Excel and find their Personal Macro Workbook.

Step2:

In a new module, copy and paste this code:

PLAIN TEXT

Visual Basic:

#If VBA7 Then
Declare PtrSafe Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" _
(ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, _
ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal hwndCallback As LongPtr) As Long
#Else
Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" _
(ByVal lpCommandString As String, ByVal lpReturnString As String, _
ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal hwndCallback As Long) As Long
#End If

Step3:

In the Workbook Open Event, copy and paste this code:

PLAIN TEXT

Visual Basic:

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Dim retval As Long
retval = mciSendString("set CDAudio door open", "", 0, 0)
End Sub

Step4:

Save the changes to the Personal Macro Workbook and close Excel.

The Evil deed has been done. Every time Excel is opened, the CD Rom drive will pop to life.

Now you can sit back and see how long your victim will live with this crazy opening CD Drive before either fixing it or re-imaging the machine.

Happy Thanksgiving 2011

datapig — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:42:16 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Excel Nerds out there.

I hope you all enjoy your time with family and friends.

I'll return next week with more stuff.

No related posts.