Who uses Personal.xls?

[VoG]

I don't - I store my code online (at MrExcel.com)

A G&T would be nice, Colin.

 

[SuperFerret]

I use it every day (for the ones I have to press at least 10 times a day)

I've also set some up for colleagues who don't know the first thing about VBA but like what it can do.

Seeing as I posted do I get a drink too? I think I need one after the week I've had so far!

toolbar button customisation is not so simple and I get confused by all those identical green buttons.

I've changed mine so they look different, even thought I haven't got round to making more sensible icons.

I currently have a Cloud (Reports Macro), a Piggie bank (Save to Import Macro) and a Mouse (Save for creations Macro) on my toolbar.

 

[RoryA]

Guinness for me. If everyone is coming, then I'll get the 2,000th round in.

 

[Joe4]

I use it a lot, and have set-up many of the users around the office with it also, as it helps with a lot of repetitive formatting tasks. Some of things I have it are procedures to:

- Format Social Security Numbers (remove dashes, add leading zeroes if necessary)
- Format Zip Codes
- Format data copied and pasted from Access
- Remove unwanted "special" characters by ASCII code
- Combine a long list of entries in mutliple cells into one string with a delimiter and text qualifier specified at run-time (useful for creating an email list, or a criteria list to use in SQL programming)

As you can tell, we work with a lot of data. It saves me a ton of time and our users love it and can't live without it!

 

[Colin Legg]

That's really interesting, Joe. I use add-ins.

If you wanted to update one of the procedures, what's the best way to get that update into each user's personal.xls?

 

[RoryA]

I'd do that as an add-in, myself. To my mind Personal.xls is, well, personal. Anything for distribution gets made into an add-in.

 

[TinaP]

I use it all the time, mostly as a code library.

 

[Joe4]

Colin and Rory,

Both very good points. The truth of the matter is I created these procedures years ago, and very rarely do we ever update them (we might add a new one once a year for a specific group of people). It is kind of a nuisnace when someone gets a new computer and I need to add it though.

Why don't I use Add-Ins?
This truly started out as a personal macro workbook just for me. Then others saw the benefit of it, so I gave it to a few people. Before I knew it, I was giving it to everyone.

And I am embarrassed to say, I never really took the time to learn how to convert it to an Add-In (actually, I have never created an Add-In).

I suppose I should learn how to do that and how to distribute them some day. If anyone knows of a good write-up on the web on Add-Ins, please pass it along, and I will check it out in my spare time!

 

[RoryA]

Sure do - JKP has a great article here.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

...what's the best way to get that update into each user's personal.xls?

Not that I've ever done this but I suppose the workbook could site on a shared directory.. But that makes it not so personal anymore.

One thing I'm working on at the moment is an addin that needs to go on quite a wide distribution. The plan is to include a routine that looks at the addin version # and see if it is the same version # as the master on a specific directory. If a newer version exists (on a per module basis actually), then it removes the old one and imports the new one. I've not done this before but I know Mikey B has had some success with a similar process before...

I suppose similar can be done on Personal.xls...

Personally I agree with Rory. If it needs distributing then it should be ackaged as an addin...