Convert concatenated text into a formula?

[vanclute]

I have no clue if this can be done, and maybe it doesn't even need to be done if someone has a better solution to my proble. Here it is...

I'm using Excel with a stock analysis program called Investor RT. IRT will allow me to link via DDE to Excel so I can bring in values from my data provider directly into Excel for manipulation. Nifty! However, the format of the cel MUST be as follows for the DDE link to work:

=rt|symbol!data_column

Now what I want, is to, for example, make it do this:

=rt|$C3!data_column

So that I can fill down and have my formula automatically give me the data I want from my linked application on a ton of cels. However, Excel will not allow me to place a relative reference inside of the DDE formula. So...

1) Does anyone know how to do this?

or

2) I have a pseudo-solution. In another cel, I have:

=CONCATENATE("=rt|",B10,"!la")

where B10 is the cel with my ticker symbol. Now what this give me, is exactly what I want ultimately the formula to be. However the resulting cel of course just sees it as text, and not a formula. Is there any way to force a cel to behave as a formula regardless of what is generating the text?

Hopefully this makes sense... thanks a ton folks!

Jonathan

 

[mdavidge]

Have you tried to copy the column/s with these formulas from RT. Then paste special > values only into another column for manipulation with formulas?

Mike

 

[vanclute]

I never did come up with a solution for this, and it was SOOOO long ago that I didn't even remember this thread!

As I recall though i was looking for a full automated solution, where I could input the initial data (stock tickers if memory srves) and have the DDE link just always work on opening the workbook. The closest solution I could ever find was one that required manually inputting every ticker's formula once the first time, then DDE would "wake up" and work. Not an acceptable solution unfortunately...

Honestly I abandoned that entire project long ago anyway, but it's nice to know that perhaps my efforts from 2002 will prove helpful to someone today! :D

Jonathan

 

[lucianot]

LOL!

I did notice that the topic was old, I thought somebody would have solved this by now!

Anyways, the best dirty solution I got was writing a macro that pastes the formula everytime you change the cell(s) that contain the symbols. But I still haven't been able to get a clean formula working.

This seems to be a major flaw in DDE linking. Does anyone want to take up this challange??