We've migrated the 1.4 Million posts in the MrExcel Message Board to a new board software. One thing that is different: the steps to post your spreadsheet to the board. This video will take a look at the free XL2BB Excel add-in that you can use.
Transcript of the video:
Learn Excel for MrExcel Podcast Episode 2299.
Using XL2BB to Post to the MrExcel forum.
Hey, welcome back to MrExcel Netcast. I'm Bill Jelen.
We are super excited here November 17th, 2019 at MrExcel.com that we have a brand new forum. This is the fourth version of our forum.
We've moved from originally WWWBoard up to PHPBB up to VBulletin and now to Xenforo.
Xenforo is designed to be a modern experience. It is going to be great.
The one big thing that changed though is if you want to post your spreadsheet to the board were not allowing HTML anymore because it was deemed a security threat.
So all of the wonderful people who wrote HTML maker or Excel Jeannie that were taking your spreadsheet and posting it in HTML. We have to move on beyond that.
And So what we've given you instead is a brand new thing called. XL2BB. It's free.
Alright, so if you go to MrExcel, Help, XL2BB. Scroll down a little bit right.
Here is the link to download.
It's the actual XLAM so you have the download there. Here's how it's going to work.
Go back into Excel.
My quick shortcut is alt T-for-Tom, I and then click browse. Browse your downloads folder.
Choose XL2BB Click OK.
And it will be installed.
Two things you should see.
First, on the Home tab, far right hand side, a link to take to the MrExcel forum and then Capture Range. Same thing appears on the Help tab.
I really wanted it only on the Help tab but I realize some people aren't using Office 365 and so you have it on the Home tab.
You can also right click an say add to Quick Access Toolbar so you have your command right there.
Now let's say that I want to show this data on the board.
First, choose the range that I want to capture.
Use the icon and I want to show cell formulas if there was conditional formatting, data validation or named regions then I would have those choices.
Generate output.
It's successfully been saved to the clipboard. You can now paste into the forum post. Click OK.
Then we switch over to the forum. And we'll go to Test Here.
Post thread.
Testing XL2BB. [ Typing ] Hey everyone.
I have a problem today.
This spreadsheet is not calculating correctly [ end typing ] and then I'm going to paste Ctrl+V.
And it doesn't look good at all, but that's OK. Choose preview.
And down here in the preview you'll see what it's going to look like, all right now.
Let me post this alright, perfect now let's say that you're trying to help people out, right?
And someone has posted using XL2BB.
How the first thing you'll see that anything with yellow triangle is a cell with the formula.
So if you hover you'll see the formula right there in the cell.
I know that Excel Jeannie would list all the formulas down at the bottom, and we've done the same thing here.
If the formula is the same formula all the way through.
So then we're saying that the formula in B2 is this, and that applies the B2:F9.
That way, we don't have to list 100 formulas, and so on.
Here's an awesome thing about this.
Let's say that you are out trying to provide help to someone, and they've used it, used XL2BB to post to the board, and you would like to try and replicate this back in Excel. Come here to Copy to Clipboard.
Range copied to clipboard. We will come back to Excel.
Come to a brand new worksheet. Ctrl+N for New. Then Paste.
And you will now have basically the spreadsheet that the person put in.
The thing that won't work here is if they use Ctrl+Shift+Enter, in their spreadsheet.
We have no way through the paste to put Control+Shift+Enter.
So if someone's using old array formulas, yeah, it's not going to work, but at least you'll be able to come in here and experiment with the formulas and change things.
We think this is a good way to allow people to post to the board.
Now there is another option.
This second option is not as good, although it might be easier for some people. Windows has a tool called the Snipping tool.
If you search for Snipping tool and here the Snipping tool comes up, I want to create a new snip.
Drag the cursor around the area you want to capture.
So I can just choose this like this.
And then I'm going to copy this to the clipboard. And come back to the board.
This is an example of a pasted picture.
Not created using XL2BB.
Right and just paste and the picture now is embedded in the post like that, right?
So two different ways that you can use to post your spreadsheet to the board.
Super easy, Super Simple once you have it installed it should work really, really well.
We're really excited about this new board.
It's modern technology.
We brought all of the old content over, which was a massive effort.
Six months of planning and about 27 hours to convert the almost 1.4 million posts in the old board We are trying to keep the MrExcel Board to be a good experience for everyone.
Well hey if you like what you see in this video please subscribe and ring that Bell.
I want to thank everyone for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Using XL2BB to Post to the MrExcel forum.
Hey, welcome back to MrExcel Netcast. I'm Bill Jelen.
We are super excited here November 17th, 2019 at MrExcel.com that we have a brand new forum. This is the fourth version of our forum.
We've moved from originally WWWBoard up to PHPBB up to VBulletin and now to Xenforo.
Xenforo is designed to be a modern experience. It is going to be great.
The one big thing that changed though is if you want to post your spreadsheet to the board were not allowing HTML anymore because it was deemed a security threat.
So all of the wonderful people who wrote HTML maker or Excel Jeannie that were taking your spreadsheet and posting it in HTML. We have to move on beyond that.
And So what we've given you instead is a brand new thing called. XL2BB. It's free.
Alright, so if you go to MrExcel, Help, XL2BB. Scroll down a little bit right.
Here is the link to download.
It's the actual XLAM so you have the download there. Here's how it's going to work.
Go back into Excel.
My quick shortcut is alt T-for-Tom, I and then click browse. Browse your downloads folder.
Choose XL2BB Click OK.
And it will be installed.
Two things you should see.
First, on the Home tab, far right hand side, a link to take to the MrExcel forum and then Capture Range. Same thing appears on the Help tab.
I really wanted it only on the Help tab but I realize some people aren't using Office 365 and so you have it on the Home tab.
You can also right click an say add to Quick Access Toolbar so you have your command right there.
Now let's say that I want to show this data on the board.
First, choose the range that I want to capture.
Use the icon and I want to show cell formulas if there was conditional formatting, data validation or named regions then I would have those choices.
Generate output.
It's successfully been saved to the clipboard. You can now paste into the forum post. Click OK.
Then we switch over to the forum. And we'll go to Test Here.
Post thread.
Testing XL2BB. [ Typing ] Hey everyone.
I have a problem today.
This spreadsheet is not calculating correctly [ end typing ] and then I'm going to paste Ctrl+V.
And it doesn't look good at all, but that's OK. Choose preview.
And down here in the preview you'll see what it's going to look like, all right now.
Let me post this alright, perfect now let's say that you're trying to help people out, right?
And someone has posted using XL2BB.
How the first thing you'll see that anything with yellow triangle is a cell with the formula.
So if you hover you'll see the formula right there in the cell.
I know that Excel Jeannie would list all the formulas down at the bottom, and we've done the same thing here.
If the formula is the same formula all the way through.
So then we're saying that the formula in B2 is this, and that applies the B2:F9.
That way, we don't have to list 100 formulas, and so on.
Here's an awesome thing about this.
Let's say that you are out trying to provide help to someone, and they've used it, used XL2BB to post to the board, and you would like to try and replicate this back in Excel. Come here to Copy to Clipboard.
Range copied to clipboard. We will come back to Excel.
Come to a brand new worksheet. Ctrl+N for New. Then Paste.
And you will now have basically the spreadsheet that the person put in.
The thing that won't work here is if they use Ctrl+Shift+Enter, in their spreadsheet.
We have no way through the paste to put Control+Shift+Enter.
So if someone's using old array formulas, yeah, it's not going to work, but at least you'll be able to come in here and experiment with the formulas and change things.
We think this is a good way to allow people to post to the board.
Now there is another option.
This second option is not as good, although it might be easier for some people. Windows has a tool called the Snipping tool.
If you search for Snipping tool and here the Snipping tool comes up, I want to create a new snip.
Drag the cursor around the area you want to capture.
So I can just choose this like this.
And then I'm going to copy this to the clipboard. And come back to the board.
This is an example of a pasted picture.
Not created using XL2BB.
Right and just paste and the picture now is embedded in the post like that, right?
So two different ways that you can use to post your spreadsheet to the board.
Super easy, Super Simple once you have it installed it should work really, really well.
We're really excited about this new board.
It's modern technology.
We brought all of the old content over, which was a massive effort.
Six months of planning and about 27 hours to convert the almost 1.4 million posts in the old board We are trying to keep the MrExcel Board to be a good experience for everyone.
Well hey if you like what you see in this video please subscribe and ring that Bell.
I want to thank everyone for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
