Introduction I was recently chatting with a friend, and he was asking how you can have dynamic ribbon buttons, buttons that are available depending upon worksheet events. I knocked up a simple example, and I thought I would share it here for anyone else who might be interested. It takes a few steps, but it is remarkably easy. The example has three buttons within a single group, on a custom tab. The first button can be hidden by changing a cell value (a data validation cell in this case), or have

Introduction In my last blog post, I described how I thought that I could build an Excel 2007 ribbon on th fly. The technique was founded upon having a ‘worker’ addin that handled the main functionality as well as the version management and ribbon building; and a simpler Excel 2007 ribbon wrapper addin. This approach would be similar to the myriad of table driven menu solutions around, but the ‘table’ would be a configuration file in this case, to allow the user to control

I recently needed to build an Excel addin that supported a variable number of options, with buttons to invoke the options. That in itself is not unusual, but I also wanted the numbers to be driven by the user; which always complicates matters. The definition of the buttons is simple, even allowing for the fact that it will be maintained by users. I could use a separate configuration workbook, an INI file, or even XML. As I am looking to make this a user driven facility, within an overall Excel framework

Keep It Simple? Don't Be Daft! I was recently working on a project where we were using SSRS to create XML reports which are then imported into Excel to facilitate further analysis. Unfortunately, I could not see any option in PowerPivot to connect to an XML source. There is the option for text and RSS, but no XML that I can see. I know I could create an RDL and connect to that, but XML is far more than just SSRS. I raised this with some colleagues, and one of them pointed me to this Microsoft

Power To The Ashes So the excitement is all over, and England have deservedly beaten the Australians at the latest Ashes series. Many late evenings have been spent listening to the coverage on Radio 5, catching the usual humour and generally irrelevant things that get covered in a cricket test match, things that help to make cricket the wonderful event that it is, more than just a game, a life affirming experience. Even David Cameron trying to climb aboard the 'feel-good' bandwagon can detract

As I am sure that you are all aware, PowerPivot is the best thing to hit Excel since PED . Although I am not a big data cruncher, I have been playing with PowerPivot; to keep abreast of an important technology; it plays into one of my primary interests of Business Intelligence; and partly to seek out further opportunities. Although I have been scouring the blogs and dedicated websites, I do like to have a book as a reference point, and so I was very pleased to get a review copy of PowerPivot for

Recently, I was working on one of my apps, one that is database centric. Whilst making some changes, I came across this piece of code that inserts a new record into the database With RS .AddNew .Fields(FIELD_AUDIT_DATE) = sh.Cells(Rownum, COL_FU_AUDIT_DATE).Value .Fields(FIELD_CONSULTANT_ID) = GenerateID(FIELD_CONSULTANT_ID, Designer) .Fields(FIELD_SALES_TYPE_ID) = GenerateID(FIELD_SALES_TYPE_ID, sh.Cells(Rownum, COL_FU_SALES_TYPE).Value) .Fields(FIELD_CUSTOMER) = sh.Cells(Rownum, COL_FU_CUSTOMER

Excel’s ability to run pivot tables against an OLAP cube in Analysis Services is a truly wondrous beast. The ease of use; volumes of data; the filtering; all of these provide a rich environment for users to easily inspect their data and get real information out. Add to this that Microsoft seem to believe that pivot tables are a winner and keep improving it, access to cubes and slicers being some of the latest significant changes, I can see no reason for all serious Excel users not to get to

One of my primary interests at present is Business Intelligence (BI), using available tools to present meaningful information to the business that actually adds value. I won’t go into what BI is, the quality of BI products available at present, or the how businesses perceive or fails to perceive BI, that may be a topic for another day, but rather in developing my skills and capabilities in this area. Excel is a wonderful medium for presenting this information, and the majority users that I

I have been playing with PowerPivot recently, and one of the sites I have visited is Rob Collie's PowerPivotPro blog, http://powerpivotpro.com/ . One particular post that caught my eye was a guest post by Colin Banfield , on building complex DAX formulas in NotePad++. As Colin noted, the PowerPivot formula editor is severely limited, a better option is required when working with more complex DAX formulae. As Colin suggested, NotePad++ can provide this better option; with code folding, keyword