Excel: removing formulas but keeping the answers as text - excel

I have an Excel document which makes a lot of calculations and shows the results in specific fields as text. I need to get these answers into PHP but Excel Reader can't read those fields, since they are the results of calculations.
So, I want to save the Excel document without the formulas/calculations, but with the results as text. How do i do this?
I'm stuck using Excel 2004 Mac btw.
edit: I forgot to mention: a client of mine has to upload a new version of this Excel document each day (the calculations change daily), so the simpler the solution the better. Also, there are too many values to change them all manually.

A finger dance worth remembering
ALT + E, S, V
To Paste Special (Values)

select all, then copy, then paste special as value
if this is need every day then you almost certainly want to record a macro that loops over very worksheet in the work book and does this

Related

Use the Same Excel VB Code In Multiple Workbooks Used by Multiple Users Without Having to Update Each Workbook

tl;dr: Is there a way to have multiple (10+) excel Macro workbooks run the same project from a single location so that if I need to fix a bug, I don't need to fix it in every single workbook?
Long version:
My company uses excel workbooks for engineering charts. Any changes are formatted as bold and highlighted gray. We then have a revision "table" at the bottom (I say "table" because it's just some merged cells - there doesn't seem to be a way to make a separate table that doesn't follow the column sizing for the rest of the workbook, but that's a question for another day).
When we do a new revision, we have to first clear any formatting from the previous revision, make our changes (and format them), then insert a row to the revision "table", then unformat the previous revision entry and reformat our new revision entry. Then, we export the workbook as a PDF which we name according to our print naming format. However, it is easy to make mistakes when doing this because the file name must be manually entered according to the format.
To make this process less tedious/error-prone, I wrote a VB macro program to automate the above steps, among other things. It works great, and will be implemented on our charts company wide.
However, I can only do so much testing on my own - there are bound to be things I missed or can do more efficiently (I'm an engineer, not a professional programmer). And we have dozens of engineering chart spreadsheets. If we implement this and then I discover I need to fix a bug or make an improvement to part of the program, I don't want to have to fix it in every single workbook - that would take way too long and be too easy to miss a workbook!
Any advice would be appreciated.

Referencing a linked file from INDEX() in Excel (Office 365)

I've got a collection of about 40 Excel worksheets. They store information about the number of hours that people have spent working on different projects, with dates across the top row from left to right and project names down the first column. Each member of the team has their own separate worksheet.
I'm making a new worksheet that will add up the number of hours each person has spent on a specific project.
I'm using this formula to add up all the numbers in a particular range of a linked file:
SUM(INDEX('S:\path\to\folder[Username_2017.xlsx]Daily'!G:JG,JOB_ROW,0))
JOB_ROW is the row containing the numbers I want to add up. Columns G:JG cover 1 Jan - 31 Dec. Username_2017.xlsx is different for each of the 40 people.
The problem is that the formula only works if I create it by hand. I can't find any way to use a dynamic reference to the filename, which gets very tedious with 40+ files to reference. I thought this might work:
SUM(INDEX(INDIRECT(C3),JOB_ROW,0))
...where C3, C4, C5 etc. would contain automatically-generated filenames and references. But it doesn't work. I get #REF!. And Excel doesn't prompt me to link the files -- which suggests to me that it will never work this way.
I've also found that even when the spreadsheet is working properly with the manually-entered formulae, if I save it and re-open it then Excel tries to be helpful by stripping out the formulas and replacing them with the text #REF!.
Is it possible to do what I'm trying to do? Or do I need to learn some VBA?
I should point out that I've largely avoided using Excel in my career so far -- so if there's a better way to achieve this then I'd love to hear it.
Thanks in advance for your help.
ian0411 gave the simple answer to this question in the comments above: the answer is "you can't do that".
If he wants to post that then I'll accept it as an answer -- but for the benefit of anyone else reading this question and looking for alternative options, here's what I tried and what worked:
VBA
I wrote some very simple VBA using GetObject() to open and read from each of the workbooks. It worked, but a) it was very slow, and b) it seemed to keep all the files open as long as Excel was running, which caused other problems. It also crashed a lot.
I gave up on VBA.
Automating the filename replacement
The next option I tried was to have a column of filenames in Excel, with a column next to it containing the formula that I wanted to run on each file. Instead of putting the linked filename in the formula, I put a unique placeholder ('XXXXX' or whatever).
Then I made a little macro that (for the currently selected row) did a search and replace across the row to change 'XXXXX' to the filename in column A. I had to run the macro 40 times to cover each file, but I only had to do that process once. When I add a new file to the list, I'll just add a new line, copy the formulas, and update the filename.
I've now got a spreadsheet which works perfectly when the linked files are closed, and which doesn't rely on VBA.
Perhaps if my VBA skills were better I could have written something less flaky -- but doing it all with INDEX() seems like the fastest, most elegant, and most reliable solution.

How big is too big?

I have a 60mb excel file that has all of the "sins"... Array formulas, VBA and conditional formats. It crashes all the time and it's now being suggested that it's too big. There are about 20 worksheets and 3 of them are 15mb in size and each have about 35,000,000 active cells. Is this why the sheet crashes?
Yea I have this problem also.
This is a compilation of hat works for me. Some of this may be relevant, some may not.
Turn off automatic calculation. If you are desperate about this, then turn it off while doing the rest of the list but turn on afterwards
Make a backup. Everytime something on this list works, make a new backup. Excel has no brain, make sure to use your own.
Remove empty-but-not-empty cells... Sometimes, for a number of reasons, excel finds it necessary to keep track of all possible rows and columns.
I fix this by recreating whatever chart I have made by copying the specific areas that are needed on new sheets and then delete the old one and rename the new one to match. Search/replace will fix formulas afterwards if they get buggered. You can also mark the rows/cols and right-click -> delete rows/cols but that may cause a total freeze so I prefer the former method.
Get rid of the array formulas. Seriously, they can in 90-something % of the time be replaced by a cleverer sumproduct, sumifs or index(match()) formula or by adding columns or doing things in 2 steps. They are resource hogs. Leftovers from a different age. The only time I accept arrays is when I know I have exhausted all possibilities.
Very important, save the files as x64 binary formats for the files (.xlsb). Do not use the "compatibility" format (.xlsx) and for the love of god, do not use regular .xls
Move all graphics to separate sheets, and better yet, separate files. Mirror the result data via vba, copy paste, whatever to separate files and have your conditional formatting, images, graphs, progress bars, gantts, whatever there.
I hope it's not inappropriate to post this.
After some stalling and perhaps some skepticism, I replaced all of the array formulas in my sheet. There were approximately 1,500,000 cells affected by array formulas and I didn't relish the thought of redoing this. BUT WHAT AN UNBELIEVABLE DIFFERENCE! The sheet now runs faster, better and very reliably! I'll never use an array formula again. Thank you!!

VBA - Pretty Print a Row in Excel

I want to print a row in Excel.
One row contains data for one project.
I want to print one row on one page nicely formatted. Meaning the value of one cell is the header and should be printed fat and centred, the other values should also be placed at fixed positions on the page.
Is this with VBA possible? When I was searching for this problem I only found results for printing a worksheet or a table or parts of it, but no results to use the values of the cells and formatting them.
Thanks in advance
As the other answers indicate, it is certainly possible in Excel VBA, but it is not really Excel's strong point.
What would typically be done to obtain the result you seem to be after is use a fully formatted Word document with fields that are then filled in with values from an Excel worksheet. You can even cheat a bit and use the Mail Merge \ Letter wizard to set everything up.
If you do want to do it all in Excel, you can find instructions and an example VBA macro here:
http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=4223
Template is a good way to do. With a macro there's better performance where it avoids the usage of volatile functions such as INDIRECT() However again it depends on how many volatile functions your worksheet carries.
Yes, it is possible when you use the Styles in excel. I know you can do Font formatting quite easily. Not sure about indenting it, but worth a try.
If style doesnt support it (it might in Excel 2010), you can always indent it via VBA (record a macro when you indent the values , it should look like this):
Selection.InsertIndent 1

Printing in Excel 2007

At work, I've been tasked with fixing a horrible spreadsheet they have been using for many years. What I'm looking for is a solution to allow me to print (in duplex, some time after the basic program is working) the same spreadsheet, but update the date before printing the next one. If this project was in C or C++ I could handle it but using the Excel sheet is making it impossible for me. I've been searching for days upon end and can't get anything to work. I do not care what specific language, I just don't know anything about MS office programming. Any suggestions?
Example:
Spreadsheet is called "LC" in workbook LCWB.XLS
in pseudocode I'm looking for:
A button or input that will allow me to select 10 12 14 weeks, and store that number * 7 to provide days in a variable we will call X.
There will also be the "beginning date" stored in a cell "A1"
The date is supplied to the program to update the date at every iteration, until there are 70 pages with consecutive dates on them.
Then a loop
while count <= X
print excel worksheet LC
update "date cell"="date cell" + 1
Does not need to save anything, I hope this makes sense, if not, I will upload part of the actual sheet. I'd really like to figure this out in part on my own to learn, but I'm so confused.
Like I previously mentioned, the language doesn't matter. VBA in Excel, VB, VC#... The computer running this has Win XP SP3 and Office 2007.
Why are you needing to print the sheet out if nothing on the sheet changes but the dates?
I'm a print provider and would refer to this as a variable data printing project. Personally (knowing design software) I would put all the dates into a CSV file and then put the rest of the documents content in InDesign. Alternatively you may be able to use M$ Word's mail merge feature... Anyhow have a field in the document (like a form letter) that pulls the dates from the CSV file. Word or InDesign will generate the multi-page file for you to print with the dates inserted where that field was.

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