EXCEL

We can set up custom workbooks, templates and Add-Ins to provide easy access, using menus and toolbars, to common functions, features and custom functions and procedures. Excel also has a number of events, such as print, save and new worksheet that can be intercepted so that code can be processed prior to these events. This is useful for saving documents to specific locations, or printing with specific page properties. We can also provide custom procedures that respond to mouse events, such as double click, useful for reports that drill down to underlying data. Code can also be used to consolidate data from many different sources, workbooks, text files and databases.

Add-Ins are best used when procedures and functions are needed for multiple workbooks, the Add-In is loaded with the Excel application and is available globally to all workbooks. This is useful for custom calculations that

Excel’s built in functions do not cater for. Procedures can also be written for automatic formatting of tables ready for insertion into other documents.

As with Word, templates are great for keeping the style of documents consistent, i.e. chart formatting and colours. Graphs can be linked to dynamic ranges so that they update as the data changes, for example for month on month analysis. Pivot tables can be configured automatically, so that non-technical people can spend more time analysing the data.