could anyone suggest a way multiple user can access single Excel file(Database) using Single userform. I have a system where multiple users have to update single excel file (Adding or deleting record). So could any of you suggest how should i proceed. I know this is an software process question rather than a software code question. But still asking, if Anybody could help me as i cannot find a feasible solution to do so.
When you have a network share available, would 'Shared Workbook' do the trick? (sounds a lot like it to me). You basically check a box that the workbook is from now on 'shared'. Excel will allow several users in parallel to open the same file for editing. It will make sure that everyones writes end up in the file (and that each save gives you others' edits).
You can find more info e.g. here: https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/About-the-shared-workbook-feature-49b833c0-873b-48d8-8bf2-c1c59a628534?ui=en-US&rs=en-IE&ad=IE
This may not be what you want, but you an have multiple users editing multiple files, but have the data combined into a single file. This will work as long as you have a fixed maximum number of data editors (say 20). Just create a simple data entry file with the userform built in that stores the data entered in a sheet. Now create 20 copies of this, one for each user, and store them in a file sharing environment like SharePoint or a shared network drive. Now you can have the master "database" file aggregate them into a single file by using workbook links.
In order to be able to do things with them as if they were a single data set, you need to do a sort of union of the data, which is not straightforward in Excel. Again, you need to establish a hard maximum size for each user to edit - for example, 5000 rows. On a Sheet in your database workbook, designate rows 2-5001 for the first user, then leave an empty row (usually I color it black to make it easy to spot), then 5002-10003 for the next user, etc. In Cell B2, put the formula
=if('J:\Network folder\[Data Entry 1.xlsm]DataSheet'!B2="","",'J:\Network folder\[Data Entry 1.xlsm]DataSheet'!B2)
and fill that to all the cells in that range (down to row 5001). Then repeat in the next range (B5002, for the second range:
=if('J:\Network folder\[Data Entry 2.xlsm]DataSheet'!B2="","",'J:\Network folder\[Data Entry 1.xlsm]DataSheet'!B2)
Related
I currently have one excel file with four worksheets with data (Name: target value 2022.xlsx). This data is used in multiple excel files to make calculations and to show the values using VLookUp. Until now I copy-paste the values from this one file with four worksheets into all the other files with those four worksheets (and more) when one value changes throughout the year. It also seems to be problematic when a new year begins and a new "target value 2023.xlsx" is required. I tested a lot of ways to make a connection, but nothing seems to be the perfect way:
copy-paste each table via VBA (current way, but I don't want to open every file just because one value changed and click the "Refresh" button)
external reference Cell A1: =[target value 2022.xlsx]Table1!E3 (if one column is deleted, the connection shows #REF!)
Data > New Query > From File > From Workbook (if one column is deleted, the power query doesn't work anymore)
Data > From Text (only works, if all four worksheets are in four seperate csv-files, not optimal)
Data > From Access (seems to be the best way to get the data from four different tables within the database???)
What's the best way to do this, if multiple people use it? The values in "target value 2022.xlsx" change multiple times a year and many users need different files where the data is required. Thank you!
Is it possible to insert a code so we can track all copied excel files in the future?
The reason why: we are creating a template excel file that people can copy and fill in. The problem is that they regularly have to fill in the same information so instead of starting from the template they copy the already filled in template.
If we decide to change the template, we want to change all the files that were copied so there are no multiple versions going around.
All the files are stored on a server in subfolders so We can access them all. Titles of the file will vary based on the wishes from the customer.
After reading you, I see that:
Summary:
You have one single Template that everybody copies
You store all the filled templates on one Server Subfolder
Title of the Files varies from Customer's needs
Challenges:
For Performance shake, you might need of a program than Excel to manage those files
Otherwise, it is possible to use Excel VBA, but is somehow/enough complicated so you would need to have an advanced skills and enough time to write everything handling that Subfolders' file renaming if you wish to collect the data in one Single Excel.
Suggested Solution:
I recommend you to have A Locked Worksheet + Workbook Excel
Template so your customers won't be able to edit its structure and
it will keep all of your templates to be the same.
You better have some kind of the Standard in the nomenclature of your Excel Files which will help you use that description later on for search/filter/sorting ...
You can have a Reset Button as well within the Template where your customers will click and will empty all the fields effortless.
In short, If you wish to track of files being copies, you would need more than Excel VBA for that as you need to play with A windows service for you to track them.
Hope this will give you some ideas. All the Best!
I have no previous experience in Access, VBA coding or in Excel macros prior to teaching myself the past month via these forums. Thank you forums and contributors. I have enjoyed my Access learnings so far, the challenge that it has provided and appreciate any help that I can get. As such, the code and methods that I have used to this point may well be convoluted and confusing. I will do my best to provide relevant details and accurate terminology.
I work in a lab and I am creating an Access Form for semi-automated reporting. Samples are received from clients and are logged into the Excel Table R&D Log. The worksheet is InProcess. Samples are sorted based on the site in which they originate and given a one or two letter site code (G, D, WH, etc.) and an ID "yy-000" in separate Excel columns (i.e. D 18-096). Samples may be submitted for multiple analyses (Metals, Water, Soil, etc.) and may even have multiple rows of reporting if multiple analytes are identified in the sample. There are several other columns, such as receipt date, reporting date, units, etc. Once samples are reported, I manually copy and paste them into the Archived worksheet, and delete the record and blank row from the InProcess worksheet. Since one sample may have multiple analyses and even more potential results, each record would be reported on a new Excel row (with the same D 18-096 ID number). Thus, there is not a single unique identifier or primary key for each sample in the current format. R&D Log is updated manually by lab technicians and the worksheet InProcess is a linked table in an Access Database.
The Access Database is using two combo boxes on a Form frmInProcess to filter a Query qryInProcess of the linked table. The combo boxes are filtering the report destination (one client may receive multiple site codes) and the analysis (reports are separated based on type of analysis). The Query is also filtering out blank results and blank dates, so only completed samples will appear on the filtered Form. I have generated VBA code to this point that will export the Form to a .pdf, save the file with unique filename, and open outlook to mail out the report. I have also managed to export the filtered Form frmInProcess to an Excel file Access Test (not the linked file).
What I would like to do now is to automate the transfer of completed test results from the Excel worksheet R&D Log: InProcess to R&D Log: Archived and delete the record from the InProcess worksheet. I am not sure if I can export the filtered Form into a linked Excel table, or if I must use a separate Excel file (or if it even matters for simplicity of code?). I would now like to read the exported filtered Form in Excel Access Test, lookup matching rows in R&D Log based on several criteria (site, ID, Analysis, Analyte, Report Date) and automate the transfer of records between R&D Log worksheets. End result being that Access generates reports for completed tests, and the records are removed from InProcess testing and transferred to Archived testing in Excel. I am guessing that I may need to close the Access application and perform this in Excel. Hope this is easy enough to follow.
Thank you.
In my experience, importing an Excel document into a temporary NEW (or totally empty) Access table is usually the easiest way to go. Then you do not have to worry about cell references like you do in Excel VBA. Even if the Excel document has old data in it with just a few new changes each time, importing it into a temporary Access table could be the simplest way to go, because then you can compare the data in this table with the data in another, permanent Access table and update the latter based on the former.
As far as the original Excel file, if you need to delete rows there, it might be quicker to export a new Excel file with just the data the old one is supposed to end up with, and then use VBA to delete (or - safer! - rename) the old file.
So the development process goes something like this:
Save import steps by first importing an Excel file via Access' ribbon options "External Data" (tab) ->"Excel" and when you finish, be sure to check the "Save import steps" box and note the name you give the "saved import" because you will need that in your VBA code.
In Access, write a function for deleting the table. The VBA code is:
Const cTable = "MyExcelTempTable"
If TableExists(cTable) Then
DoCmd.DeleteObject acTable, cTable
End If
Now you can test your delete function on the data you imported.
Write VBA code to import the same spreadsheet to create the same table:
Const cSavedImport = "Import-MyExcelTempTable"
' Import the Excel file
DoCmd.RunSavedImportExport cSavedImport
Write more VBA function(s) to check the imported table for bad data and then to copy it into the permanent table. You might be updating existing records or adding new ones. Either way, you could use Access queries or SQL to do this and run them from VBA.
Write a VBA function to rename the old Excel file. (You could use an InputBox if the Excel file name is different each time. I do this for importing Excel files, and I set a default value so I do not have to type as much.)
Write a VBA function to export the new version of the Excel file.
Make yourself a button on a form that, when clicked, runs a VBA function. Inside that function, run Steps 2 through 6, above.
I am not sure my answer exactly matches what you are trying to do, but hopefully you get enough of a picture of the workflow to figure out the details of what you need.
I have a master spreadsheet that we use for tracking a certain activity. The spreadsheet contains various lines with item descriptions, and open columns where end users are to fill in dates.
An updated master spreadsheet goes out to various end users to update date values and return it to the coordinator. The coordinator then takes the various feedback sheets, and updates the master accordingly.
Up to now, this has been quite a labor-intensive task as end-users change filtering settings before sending it back, and there are 1000+ lines, so it is hard to see what the end-users updated.
Does someone know of an effective method to do a task like this, using Excel directly or VBA?
I would recommend creating a server version of the master spreadsheet so that end-users could check out that document,fill in their dates and avoid the redundancy of having someone retype everything. Sharepoint's ideal for this kind of thing.
If you want to keep it to Excel alone, though, perhaps you could save all the modified user-input-provided workbooks to a designated folder. Then write a macro to loop through each of these files in the folder. Supposing that the cells the users fill/inputting data into were previously empty, check to see if they're now not empty and copy those changes to the master file.
In my Access 2013 Desktop database, I want to validate an Excel form through VBA before importing its rows to a table.
The problem is that the imported Excel table may contain in the same column values that are numeric, string, null, etc. depending on the row due to mistakes from the user, so these values have to be initially of VBA type Variant before validation.
If the row is invalid (e.g. one value is not of numeric type while it should be, one mandatory field is null, etc.), I want to be able to store its values and let the user correct it later on. I am therefore looking for a way to build a table where I could store these rows, but where the fields are kept intact, so with the possible mixed data types.
This seems not to be possible, as Access tables need apparently to have fields of a defined type, so nothing equivalent to Variant.
How could I achieve this? What would be the simplest and most efficient way to store rows of Variant values while keeping the structure of the columns? The only way I could think of so far is to concatenate these values for each row in a string using some defined separator, and store this in a String column in an Access table, but maybe there is an easier way to do?
Thanks a lot for your help.
EDIT: Reading your answers I realized that I forgot to specify that the people filling and sending the Excel forms (who typically do not have Access on their computers) are not the same users than the ones who have the Access database and need to import the data. In this configuration it is impossible to use directly Access forms to input data, which would of course simplify tremendously the task. While we try to enforce rules for people who fill the Excel form at the first place there will be mistakes and the Access application needs to cope with them. And the importing process for the users manipulating Access should be as simple as possible (these users are not experts in IT).
I though about your problem for a while and made a few notes as I thought below.
I would strongly advise that unless the excel workbook is providing other functionality that you do not use excel, but create an simple Access database with a form they can use to interact with "their" data. They do not necessarily need an Access license to do this. Access 2013 even has new web features that can be used if you have sharepoint to collect data via a Access created web frontend.
If you are to collect data in Excel, then you must use excel validation and VBA code to validate the data as much as possible before transferring to access.
There are complexities that may or may not be an issue for you, things like:
Can users edit/created/delete the same rows concurrently - what happens if they do! You may need to "lock" rows when they are downloaded from Access. But what happens if tow users add the same record, or ones deletes a row before another user commits it back again.
Can a user open multiple excel files and edit the data they store without committing the data to Access?
Can multiple users login to the same Workbook with uncommitted changes and edit the data.
Using access will simplify your code as it will be able to prevent erroneous data being entered and remove the need to deal with the above issues and others
In summary you are using excel as a front end "form" to data stored in Access.
Each excel file can have data that has yet to be up
I would suggest that the primary key of a row is the "path and name" of the excel file that was used to create it & a unique numeric identifier. The unique identifier is a counter that is maintained for each excel file. The "path and filename" could be replaced by a unique identifier created for each file.
Many users enter data using multiple instances of Excel into a form which results in one or more rows being updated/inserted/deleted in an Excel table stored in each spreadsheet.
I would expect that whenever Excel is opened the user enters a username and excel will grab "their data" from Access. Alternatively a workbook might be set up for each department or "case type" and only interact with data that matches this "custom criteria set up in the workbook". Excel would not necessarily need to store data itself longterm. The workbook might always save data back to the database when it is saved.
You say Excel VBA performs limited validation on the data (but no complete validation). It should be used as much as possible and arguably should be able to do exactly the same validation that access can do. At the very least it should enforce datatypes etc (eg using the standard data validation rules on the excel data menu) or perhaps use VBA/controls to get any access data it needs to validate the data entered.
After updating the data the user can "commit" (ie save) the data to the access database. Before closing the workbook you might want to commit the data.
(An issue is whether a user might open many workbooks perhaps on many machines without committing the data.)
An Access "staging" table can be created with all columns having the datatype "shorttext" and not-required.
The process that loads data from an excel table into Access, will uploaded all excel rows into this staging table. It will then validate each row in the staging table and process all valid data into the main table(s) that have data types, relationships constraints etc.. Any valid rows in the staging table are flagged as "VALIDATED & TRANSFERRED", Invalid rows are flagged as INVALID. The "VALIDATED AND TRANSFERRED ROWS" are subsequently ignored, but kept so you can check what processing has happened, perhaps only whilst testing.
The data in excel is then updated with the Valid/Invalid status from Access and suitable messages given to the excel user. The user may correct and then re-commit the data.
Each excel file has a status of "changed/Unchanged" to indicate whether a user has changed data in the file.
When a user opens an excel workbook and status is unchanged it will refresh it's data. If it's changed a refresh probably can't be done.
In order for the data in Access to be updated/deleted/inserted with the changes made in Excel, there will need to be a unique identifier for each row that cannot be changed by the users in excel. This is likely to be the Path&Filename or the UserName logged into Excel and a numeric counter (which is maintained for each file or user). (This assumes that the user will have to commit changes in one excel file before they work on another.)
Anyway, without knowing more it's difficult to fully design what you will need, but I hope these thoughts help you
Harvey