Tell me why I don't like Tuesdays.

[Patience]

We get reports from our finance department - downloadable from the internet. Straight to Excel. 'Great!' I thought. But then I realised they were formatted in the most ridiculous way, with random blank lines, irritating subtotals in odd places, blank columns, and titles in stupid places.

With the help of some here, I wrote a long piece of code that cut these horrid reports about and stuck them back together into such a format that I could put into a yummy pivot table. And so I felt good about myself.

Until today.

Tuesday 3rd March 2009.

Today I am asked to do the same sort of analysis for a different account code, with income that comes from a different source. 'Easy,' I thought. 'I'll just run that handy piece of code that I created, with the help of those nice people over at Mr Excel.'

Tell me, just why would our accounts department see fit to format the reports for a different funding source so COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY from the ones I have already done??? Why now put in only one blank line between rows, rather than your ususal annoying two? WHy would you now choose column J to put your meaningless titles in, rather than the equally pointless column K???

Now I have to start ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

Lesson I have learnt - I need to learn more about making code flexible. So, every cloud...

 

[ShaunD30]

Patience...I feel your pain..

Shaun

 

[cornflakegirl]

[sends Bryony virtual gin]

 

[Patience]

Thanks guys. Support is appreciated!

I am realising that it is a seriously good idea labelling my code to tell me exactly what it is doing, as I can at least copy and paste chunks of it - and I have been having a good laugh at some of the labels. Clearly I was quite frustrated the first time round...

'Remove all the irritating formatting

'Deletes all the annoying Totals

'Move the analysis codes somewhere useful

'Get rid of those pig awful blocks of blank rows

 

[cornflakegirl]

'Get rid of those pig awful blocks of blank rows

I particularly like that one!

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

You should put those comments in the status bar

 

[Norie]

Bryony

Your finance department posts the data on the Internet.

Isn't that a bit risky?

Maybe you should have a word with them and ask them to send an email with one of those new-fangled attachment thingies.

Probably won't make any difference to the formatting problem, but you might also ask them to have a look into that at the same time.

 

[Patience]

Sorry - yes, they are internal browser based things that come with accounts packages. Not posted for all to see!


Please can someone with the power to edit please edit the fist line of my post? Thanks!

 

[SydneyGeek]

Please can someone with the power to edit please edit the fist line of my post? Thanks!

Is that like fist, scond, hird?

Denis

 

[Patience]

Yeah, yeah! Anyways, I checked with them, and all is fine! I had a huge hit of paranoia yesterday afternoon, and all is fine.