Need to win excel argument v access - help please

[Emjaye]

Ladies and Gents, your help would be very much appreciated...

Having spent the last 12 weeks on & off upgrading an excel workbook "training recording application" for work - at their request, you can imagine my dismay at being told today that (excel) macro are unlikely to be allowed to operate on work computers as they "are able to be hijacked"

As I mentioned, I've been making the upgrade for the last 10 to 12 weeks - this is on top of the time and effort it took to create the workbook several years ago.

I'm certainly no expert with excel, more a capable(?) amateur. I would like to give the bosses and idea of what it would cost if they'd contracted a professional spreadsheet developer, with this in mind, would maybe £30 per hour (sterling) sound about right?

Also... I need good, sound reasoning to back up a business case to argue for allowing this workbook app, and it's associated macro to be allowed to run.
Work = an Agency of the UK Government; the Government(?) security experts have already banned the use of Access... now they appear to be going against Excel (macro) too but apparently the way to go is the use of SQL databases: odd, because I understand Access uses SQL, and they banned Access

Anyway, I digress... to summarise >
1) I would appreciate a 'ballpark' cost per hour for a pro spreadsheet developer
and
2) Some sound and reasoned argument for allowing Excel macro to be used - other than '"because I made what you asked for in Excel, if you ban it then I've wasted my time"

thank you, Mike

p.s. I thought about getting a digital sig and signing the VBA project with that - more reasons appreciated though

 

[Emjaye]

Mike,

I think this is a very fair point and I have seen it happen many, many times. You asked for other people's opinions and I gave you mine based on experience - please don't take personal offense to it.
.

Maybe you have Colin, maybe your excel developments are made specifically so that you are the only one who can really understand them. I however, do not, mine are made so that hopefully anyone with bit of know-how can see what is going on.

I never said people in London are cleverer - you brought that into the discussion, not me..

That's true, but it's how your post was interpreted although this may not be how you intended.
The cost of living on a remote island where everything needs to be imported - and paid for - is high, pay & wages reflect this.
As an example the cheapest petrol this week is around £1.16 a litre... googling the question now gives a web hit for Asda in London selling it at 99p per litre. Incidently, when the "country" was up in arms last year or the year before at the cost of petrol, I can tell you now I'd have willingly paid 'your' expensive prices, it was still cheaper than here.

Well, for example look on the site you referenced. How many Excel developer jobs have been listed in Shetland in the last 3 months? Excel development is not a thriving industry there, so I think it is fair to assume there isn't an abundance of pro Excel VBA developers
.

Never assume anything Just because there haven't been a rash of excel developer jobs from Shetland on this particular website doesn't mean a thing.

Mike

 

[xenou]

Maybe you have Colin, maybe your excel developments are made specifically so that you are the only one who can really understand them. I however, do not, mine are made so that hopefully anyone with bit of know-how can see what is going on.

Whoa...let's keep this a fair fight - Colin wasn't exalting his skills or suggesting he writes code only he can understand.

Maybe with regard to professional Excel developers we should just find out ... let the facts speak for themselves. Is it possible the job is can be outsourced? In which case, location in Shetland is not relevant anyway?

Alex

 

[Norie]

Colin

Just because there are no jobs in the field listed how does that equate to it not being thriving.

Perhaps there are no jobs listed because there are no vacancies because they have a surplus of Excel developers
and jobs are snapped up immediately with no need to advertise them.

 

[Colin Legg]

Hi Mike,

Maybe you have Colin, maybe your excel developments are made specifically so that you are the only one who can really understand them. I however, do not, mine are made so that hopefully anyone with bit of know-how can see what is going on.

I never said they were my developments! In fact, I have seen this happen realtime to other people. I have also had several contracts where I've been called in to by a manager who is at their wit's end in order to fix code written by an ex-employee. Code breaks - it happens- and it's not necessarily a reflection on bad code - I remember one time I had to fix a superbly written dictator application which had gone up the wall because the company had upgraded to a more recent version of MS Office.

Key man risk is a serious point and was a fair comment given the information I had on the thread. So (as I said before) please don't take it personally - genuinely it was a constructive comment.

EDIT: Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I'll add that I am not a professional Excel VBA developer by trade, nor am I purporting to be. I'll happily take up a pure development contract if I'm offered it, but my work is more typically only 50% development based.

Never assume anything

So that goes both ways then, eh?

 

[Emjaye]

Whoa...let's keep this a fair fight - Colin wasn't exalting his skills or suggesting he writes code only he can understand.

Maybe with regard to professional Excel developers we should just find out ... let the facts speak for themselves. Is it possible the job is can be outsourced? In which case, location in Shetland is not relevant anyway?

Alex

Alexander - you're right, sorry

Colin - apologies, your post caught me at a bad time (i.e I've possibly been wasting mine) so I was kind of looking for all the negatives in it.
You're right, I did ask for opinions and I should have taken them good or bad, without jumping all over you - again, apologies

Mike

 

[Colin Legg]

Hi Norie,

Colin

Just because there are no jobs in the field listed how does that equate to it not being thriving.

Perhaps there are no jobs listed because there are no vacancies because they have a surplus of Excel developers
and jobs are snapped up immediately with no need to advertise them.

I'll more than happily concede that that is the case if it'll help get the thread back on track of helping Mike with the problem he faces.

 

[Norie]

Mike

I've worked in various quasi-governmental organisations eg NHS, West Of Scotland Water and major financial institutions.

I never faced restrictions as you've described, I think it was accepted that if what was done did the job, it did the job.

Mind you'll I'll admit that I didn't always follow 'official' procedures or go through the 'official' channels.

I wasn't dealing with anything too sensitive and the results seemed satisfactory to my immediate bosses.

Admittedly I think if any sort of audit was carried out then there may have been a few red faces.

In fact some of my work, code in fact, was audited by a rather well known auditor, they've got a fancy Frenchlike name.

Imagine my embarrasment when they questioned why there was a single line of code referencing an apparently non-existent userform.

It did exist of course but only in our version, not the one we sent them and it was only being used by me to monitor performance.

Anyways, enough talking rubbish - I think in your case it might be that the sensitivity of what you are dealing with is a major factor.

Your employers are probably scared about some embarassing incident happening and somehow data get's lost/stolen/sold/etc

But then again a strong argument is that if they want the job done and done well then they may have to make some compromises/whatever.

Perhaps you should try and demonstrate that what you want to do won't cause security, or any other, issues.

Don't know how you could do that, and I wish you good luck if you give it a try.

 

[Michael M]

Mike
Just to throw in my 2 bobs worth
I think Norie has covered it pretty well.
I work for a government Dept and have created a template in Excel for a significant number of engineers to use.
It has about 30 Macros inserted ( most developed with the aid of the posters here....thank you all)
I came up against a similar response from the bosses, my workaround was that I did a number of presentations to promote the "product", ran some training sessions for those that were interested in how the template worked, added help pages for both the template and the VBA.
And finally, gave assurances that apart from dying, I would support the template if they needed help, or until such time as somebody could take it over.

BTW, most govt depts are going away from Access databases here, mainly because we end up with hundreds of little DB's with no link to get them together.

Regards
Michael M

 

[Norie]

Michael

At least they are allowing the use of Access, though it sounds like people aren't using it correctly.

I've lost count of how many times I've seen Excel 'databases'.

I'm not saying it's impossible to use Excel as some sort of quasi-database and some times it might be the only option available.

But to get the functionality you would get with a 'real' database you would probably need to code it yourself.

 

[Michael M]

I don't disagree with you Norie.
And Yes...there are thousands of Excel DB's
Simply pointing out how governments DON'T work !!

Regards
Michael M