[geeks] Excel

[Jonathan C Patschke]

On Thursday, October 24, 2002, at 05:59 PM, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> I find myself writing formulas like this '=IF(AND(Vars!$B$35=TRUE,
> and(not(Vars!$B$17="I4"),and(not(Vars!$B$17="I6"),not(Vars!$B$17="I10") 
> ))),
> "Indented", "")' in cells, and wish there was a way to simplify them to
> make them more readable, maintainable, and debugable.

The easiest way to do things like that is to compose your complicated  
functions in VBA[0] and then export them to the spreadsheet so that you  
can do "=NiftyFunc(A4:A6, A5:A7)".  It's possible to do scary things in  
VBA.  I wrote a piece of software that evaluated the proficiency of  
students' reading comprehension for an ESL program years ago.

I don't recall exactly what you need to click on to invoke the VBA  
editor, but I could install Office 97 into VPC, if it doesn't stick out  
to you.


[0] Warning:  If you did not install the "extra help" or "more help"  
(depending on the version of Excel) VBA files, the documentation will  
approximate uselessness.  If you did install it, it will merely be  
impossibly frustrating.

--
Jonathan C. Patschke
Celestrion Information Systems
Thorndale, TX