MakeUseOf » microsoft excel

How To Export Your Outlook Tasks To Excel With VBA

Ryan Dube — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:01:28 +0000

Whether or not you are a fan of Microsoft, one good thing that can be said about MS Office products, at least, is how easy it is to integrate each of them with one another.

Just think of the power that comes from having incoming emails automatically generating new tasks or new calendar appointments, or having a completed task automatically email your boss with the updated status report from the task description.

If you do it right, you can cut your entire day’s workload by a boatload just by automating things in an intelligent and efficient way.

If you follow my writing here, then you know that in the past I’ve covered things like integrating web browser features into Excel, automatically maximizing application windows, or automating chart updates in Excel.

Well, in this article I’m going to cover another automation task – actually one that I’ve used often more recently – to automatically update an Excel spreadsheet with all of your remaining active Outlook tasks at the end of the day.

Feeding Outlook Tasks To An Excel Spreadsheet

There are a lot of reasons you may want to do this. Maybe you want to track your unfinished tasks on a daily basis in a format that you can quickly mail off to someone (not so easy to do with Outlook tasks). Or maybe it’ll become part of a larger report that you’ll be typing up in Word.

Whatever the case may be, the ability to capture and output uncompleted Outlook task information is a useful thing.

For this example, here’s my sample Outlook task list with 5 remaining tasks that I still haven’t completed yet.

Everything we’re going to do here, is in VBA. In Outlook, you get to the VBA editor by clicking on “Tools“, then “Macro” and then choosing the “Visual Basic Editor“.

The code that you’re going to use to capture your task list and export it to Excel is actually not quite as complicated as you might think. The first step is to plug into both Outlook objects and Excel objects by creating the necessary variable definitions. Then, using the workbook object you’ve created, start off by creating the header in your spreadsheet.

Dim strReport As String
  Dim olnameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace
  Dim taskFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
  Dim tasks As Outlook.Items
  Dim tsk As Outlook.TaskItem
  Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
  Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
  Dim sht As Excel.Worksheet
 
  Dim strMyName As String
  Dim x As Integer
  Dim y As Integer
 
  Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\MyActiveTasks.xls")
 
'  exWb.Sheets(strMyName).Delete
'  exWb.Sheets.Add (strMyName)

  Set olnameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
  Set taskFolder = olnameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderTasks)
 
  Set tasks = taskFolder.Items
 
  strReport = ""
 
  'Create Header
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 1) = "Subject"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 2) = "Due Date"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 3) = "Percent Complete"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 4) = "Status"

So, here’s what the new spreadsheet looks like. Your Outlook app just created a new Excel file called “MyActiveTasks.xls” in the C:\temp directory, and created a header for the tasks that you’re about to insert.

So, now it’s time to extract your tasks and insert them into the Excel file. I use a “y” variable starting at two in order to make sure the first row that’s used isn’t the first, because I don’t want to overwrite the header.

y = 2
 
  For x = 1 To tasks.Count
 
       Set tsk = tasks.Item(x)
 
       'strReport = strReport + tsk.Subject + "; "

       'Fill in Data
       If Not tsk.Complete Then
 
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 1) = tsk.Subject
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 2) = tsk.DueDate
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 3) = tsk.PercentComplete
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 4) = tsk.Status
        y = y + 1
 
       End If
 
  Next x

What this script does is searches through your entire list of task items in Outlook, checks to see whether the item is completed yet, and if it isn’t, then it inserts that task information into 4 cells of the spreadsheet. If you wanted to, you could insert more information. Just explore what task information is available by typing “tsk.” and then browsing through the list of properties that pop up.

Now here’s what the sheet looks like.

Being a bit of a perfectionist, there’s still a problem. Notice how column A clipped the last task subject?” I don’t like that. So let’s add a little bit more code to autofit all columns in the Excel table.

'Autofit all column widths

For Each sht In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
    sht.Columns("A").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("B").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("C").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("D").EntireColumn.AutoFit
Next sht
 
exWb.Save
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

The Save and Close methods in those last few lines will save the sheet and close it so that it doesn’t remain locked by the application, otherwise it would be difficult to open the Excel file until you closed Outlook.

So, now here’s what the finished spreadsheet looks like.

When do you set the script to run? Well, I set it up to run on the “Application.Close()” event, which runs when you exit Outlook at the end of the day. This will make outlook produce the Excel spreadsheet report at the end of the day, all on its own.

Can you think of any other cool uses for this technique? Maybe automatically firing off an email with the list of tasks, or outputting them to an HTML file and FTPing it to your web server?

With a little creativity, it’s amazing what you can pull off with a bit of scripting automation. Share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!

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How To Integrate Excel Data Into A Word Document

Ryan Dube — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:01:15 +0000

During your work week, there are probably lots of times that you find yourself copying and pasting information from Excel into Word, or the other way around.

This is how people often produce written reports based on data that’s accumulated and updated in an Excel spreadsheet. We’ve offered a lot of really cool tips and tools for Excel over the years, such as Saikat’s article on producing professional looking charts, and Steve’s article on cool Excel templates for project management.

In this article, I’m going to dive a little more into the background VBA scripting that allows you to actually program connections between data that might be stored in an Excel file and Word documents where you may be producing reports.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to accomplish this once you know how to add the right references, and how to lay out the syntax of the background VBA code.

Integrating Data From Excel Into Your Word Document

In this example, I’m going to start out with a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet. In reality, the Excel file can consist of multiple spreadsheets with lots of data, it doesn’t matter.

So long as you know where the data resides in the spreadsheet, you’ll be able to reach in and grab it using VBA.

Here’s what my sample spreadsheet looks like. It’s a list of expense totals that have been calculated throughout the entire year.

Now, lets say you have a manager that would like to see a nicely formatted report that describes the expenses, grouping together like items and laying it all out in a layout that’s a little more pleasing to the eye (and easier for the big boys upstairs to understand).

You can do this by incorporating objects like textboxes or labels into your Word document. When you’re in Word, just click on the Developer menu tab, and then select “Design Mode” in the Controls box. Use the Legacy Tools dropdown icon to find where you can insert labels into your document.

Once you have the label placed in the document where you want it (not always an easy task), you’re ready to program the data feed. But first you’ll need to name the label so that the VBA can identify it. Right click on the label and go into Properties. Find the “(Name)” field and call it something that you’ll remember.

Now, add a Command Button from the same Legacy Tools dropdown list, place it in your document, and double click it to open up the VBA editor. When you get your code working later, you can modify it so that the code runs on the Document Open() event. You’ll see that in the object dropdown boxes in the editor window.

To get started connecting Word to Excel, you’ll need to reference Excel. Click on Tools, and then References. Scroll down the list until you see the “Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library” and select it.

Once you’ve done this, the rest is just a matter of writing a ridiculously simple VBA script to pull in data from an Excel spreadsheet and automatically update the label caption with the data. Here’s how that works.

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing
 
End Sub

See how that works? The “exWb” Excel application object opens the Excel file at the path you provide it, and it’ll go right into the specific sheet and cell number, extract the data, and place it into the Caption property of the label that you named “yrTotal“.

Here’s the VBA macro in action.

The hard part with dealing with labels in Word is that it’s sometimes hard to align it at the end of a sentence or alongside any other text.

One way of overcoming that is actually incorporating some of the text alongside the data in the VBA code itself. As you can see here, I’ve put the static text right into the Caption when I create the label itself.

Now, all you have to do is include that text when you update the label with your VBA script, and just append the data from the Excel file to the end of that text. Here’s what that kind of code would look like.

Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
ThisDocument.totHotels.Caption = "Hotels: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(5, 2)
ThisDocument.TotDining.Caption = "Dining Out: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(2, 2)
ThisDocument.totTolls.Caption = "Tolls: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(3, 2)
ThisDocument.totFuel.Caption = "Fuel: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(10, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

You can use the string concatenation “&” symbol to place connect the static text with the data extracted from the Excel sheet. Here’s what the final results look like in the updated Word document.

Again, if you don’t want to have a big, ugly grey command button in your word document, just have the data-update script run on Document.Open(), and it’ll all take place behind the scenes.

In fact, in many cases you could create the initial document once, and then you’ll never have to create it again. All you’ll have to do is open it, and all of the labels will automatically update for you with the data from the updated Excel file. All you have to do is click to Print, and submit the report to your manager. A 30 minute report just turned into a 1 minute printout!

Can you think of any other cool uses for this data-integration technique using VBA? Share some of your own ideas and thoughts in the comments section below.

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How To Send Emails From An Excel Spreadsheet Using VBA Scripts

Ryan Dube — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:31:02 +0000

Using emails as part of any program is a nice way to automate important tasks, and it also significantly improves the value and functionality of any program or script.

In the past, I’ve used email a whole lot in my batch jobs and other automated scripts, just like I’ve described in past articles here on using tools like Sendmail or Blat to issue emails straight from the command line, or from within a command line script.

These are great for those times when you have a script that’s monitoring the health of a computer or the status of a specific process, but what if you want to automate sending emails from within Office products like Word or Excel?

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to do so. Maybe you have staff that update documents or spreadsheets on a weekly basis, and you’d like to receive an email notification of when those updates take place, and even a report of the data from within those sheets. There are a few techniques you can use to program automated emails from within Excel, but my favorite remains CDO.

Sending Emails From Within Excel

You’re probably thinking that scripting outgoing email into an Excel VBA script is going to be painfully complicated. Well, that’s not the case at all.

CDO is a messaging component used in Windows for a few generations of the OS. It used to be called CDONTS, and then with the advent of Windows 2000 and XP, it was replaced with “CDO for Windows 2000″. This component is already included in your VBA installation within Word or Excel and it’s ready for use.

Using the component makes sending emails from within Windows products with VBA extremely easy. In this example, I’m going to use the CDO component in Excel to send out an email that will deliver the results from a specific Excel cell.

The first step is to go to the “Developer” menu tab, click on “Insert” in the Controls box, and then select a command button. Draw it into the sheet and then create a new macro for it.

When Excel opens up the VBA editor, you’re going to need to add the reference to the CDO library. You can access this in the Tools menu, and then scroll down the list until you find “Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Library“. Select the checkbox and click OK.

Now you’re ready to use CDO to issue emails from inside Excel. To do this, you first need ot create the mail objects and set up all of the fields that will be required for sending the email. Keep in mind that while many of the fields are optional, the From and To fields are required.

Dim CDO_Mail As Object
Dim CDO_Config As Object
Dim SMTP_Config As Variant
Dim strSubject as String
Dim strFrom as String
Dim strTo as String
Dim strCc as String
Dim strBcc as String
Dim strBody As String
 
strSubject = "Results from Excel Spreadsheet"
strFrom = "ryxxxxxx@xxxxxcast.net"
strTo = "rdxxxxxx@gmail.com"
strCc = ""
strBcc = ""
strBody = "The total results for this quarter are: " & Str(Sheet1.Cells(2, 1))

The cool thing about this is that you an build up any string you want to customize a full email message and assign it to the strBody variable. Piece together components of the message by using the “&” string to insert data from any of the Excel sheets right into the email message, just like I’ve shown above.

The next section of code is where you will configure CDO to use any external SMTP server that you want to use. In this case I don’t need to use SSL because my SMTP server doesn’t require it. CDO is capable of SSL, but that’s outside the scope of this article. If you need to use SSL, I highly recommend Paul Sadowski’s awesome writeup on using CDO.

Set CDO_Mail = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
On Error GoTo Error_Handling
 
Set CDO_Config = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
CDO_Config.Load -1
 
Set SMTP_Config = CDO_Config.Fields
 
With SMTP_Config
    .Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
    .Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.metrocast.net"
    .Item("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 25
    .Update
End With
 
With CDO_Mail
    Set .Configuration = CDO_Config
End With

Now that you’ve configured the connection to the SMTP server for sending the email, all you have to do is fill in the appropriate fields for the CDO_Mail object, and issue the Send command. This is how you do that.

CDO_Mail.Subject = strSubject
CDO_Mail.From = strFrom
CDO_Mail.To = strTo
CDO_Mail.TextBody = strBody
CDO_Mail.CC = strCc
CDO_Mail.BCC = strBcc
CDO_Mail.Send
 
Error_Handling:
If Err.Description <> "" Then MsgBox Err.Description

So there you have it. There won’t be any pop-up boxes or security alert messages, which can happen when you resort to using the Outlook mail object. CDO simply puts together the email and utilizes your SMTP server connection details to fire off the message. It’s probably the easiest way I know to incorporate email into Word or Excel VBA scripts.

Here’s what the message looked like that I received in my inbox.

No hassle – just the data straight from within the Excel sheet delivered right to my email account. If you’re creative with how you put together the body string variable with all sorts of data from your Excel sheet, you can just imagine the cool automated email reports that you could put together. And if you don’t want to use a command button, just have the script run on the sheet or application close event.

Can you think up any cool uses for CDO in your own Excel, Access, or Word projects? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

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How To Add Tabs To Microsoft Office & Improve Your Document Management

Saikat Basu — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:31:28 +0000

We have got so used to tabs that we routinely miss them in the other applications we use. One of our more oft used applications happens to be the Microsoft Office suite. Tabs are something which the guys at Redmond woke up late to. So far, it has escaped an introduction in MS Office; a feature I am sure many of you out there would want as a default. At least I am sure that power users around the world are hankering for it.

Microsoft Office plug-in Office Tab (ver.7.00) heeds it and adds tabbed document support to Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Office Tab is a 2.9 MB download and it comes in commercial and free editions. The free edition is for personal use and is feature limited. As we will see, the limitations of some features do not detract from the usefulness of this plug-in when it comes to managing multiple documents.

Install and First Look

Office Tab is compatible with Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit), Windows Server, Windows Vista (32 & 64 bit), and Windows XP. It fits in with Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, 2010 (32/64).

Office Tab frees up the Windows taskbar by enabling you to work with Office documents within a single window. Windows 7 has a much improved taskbar with a preview, but Office Tab is much more efficient when it comes to working with multiple documents alongside each other. Here’s how the MS Word interface looks after the install:

As you will notice, all documents can now be opened within the same Office window, and switching makes working with multiple documents much easier.

A Few More Handy Features

Though it is a feature limited edition, Office Tab gives you a few more useful (and customizable) options to work with. You can click anywhere on the tab bar to quickly open a new document. You can alternatively right click on the tab bar to select New or Open to bring up another document. You can also Close or Save a document from here. (The features marked with an asterisk are only available in the commercial version of the app).

Each program that Office Tab supports (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in the free version) has a Settings panel where you can play around with a few more options. The Settings can be individualized for each application. The Settings panel is also displayed during the installation. The options that are grayed out are only reserved for the commercial version of the plug-in.

Some of the options available change the appearance of the tabs and the way they are displayed. For instance, you can fiddle with the position of the tabs around the workspace (Select Tab Bar Position). You can go for a change in the Style and Color of the tabs by choosing any one from the eleven styles available. Go crazy with colors if you like to put some on your tabs (only Excel and PowerPoint).

Power-users should definitely settle on the shortcut keys that help to select and switch tabs. You can also drag ‘n drop tabs, an immense help to organize multiple documents within the same window.

The commercial version has a few more important features like Quick Rename and Save-All in one click. But I don’t think you will miss them because even with the basic features, Office Tab does make for a productive experience. Try out Office Tab and let us know what you think of this useful Microsoft Office Add-in.

3 Really Handy Excel Add-ins to Easily Extract and Activate URLs

Ann Smarty — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:30:54 +0000

Excel is an awesome data management tool. I use it a lot to store and organize the information I need to deal with on a daily basis. As I am working online, most of the time this information contains multiples URLs linking to web sources.

Excel provides for plenty of flexibility to geeky, macros-savvy people. I am not one of them and creating some formulas or macros isn’t an easy task for me. If you are like me, you’ll find my tips on extracting and activating multiple hyperlinks in Excel quite handy!

1. Extract URLs

There’s a great tool that would make a lot of Excel tasks (including extracting hyperlinks from the whole list of linked cells) clearer and easier to implement – ASAP Utilities. It is easy to install, just download and run its free version.

Note: You might have to tweak your Excel security settings a bit before being able to use the tool. The tool offers step-by-step prompts, so you are unlikely to have any problems. First, to make sure the addin is going to work, navigate:

File -> Options -> Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings

There:

Make sure macros are enabled (in “Macro Settings”)
Make sure the addins are NOT disabled (in “Add-ins”)

After having it installed, you will get a new submenu with the handy “Web” section. Clicking on it will discover some very cool opportunities for working with content you copy-paste from the web.

So imagine you have copied-pasted the whole lots of linked words from the web and need to see the full URLs now – all you need to do is:

Navigate: ASAP Utilities -> Web -> Extract Hyperlinks
Select where the full URLs should be extracted:

Done!

2. Activate Hyperlinks

Let’s say you have the list of plain-text URLs (like in the above screenshot in column B) and want to make them all clickable. One way is to go through the list and double click each cell – this will activate each link, but this can take time (especially with long lists of URLs).

With ASAP Utilities, you can do that with (almost) one click of a mouse. Just select the column with your plain text URLs, go ASAP Utilities -> Web -> Activate hyperlinks and select the format and type of the hyperlinks:

Done!

Note: The “Web” section of Asap Utilities also allows you to change the format of your links to =HYPERLINK() formulas. Workbooks in Excel can become slow when they contain too many cells with hyperlinks. The =HYPERLINK() formula should let you work with huge workbooks easier.

3. Extract Domains and Top Level Domains from Hyperlinks

Imagine you have a list of URLs or linked cells in Excel and you need to sort the table by domain or top level domain (or build some stats). For that, you will need this URL tools addin. To install it, just download and save the file, then activate it from within Excel.

Navigate: Office Home button -> “Excel Options” from the bottom of the menu -> Addins and Click “Go” where it says “Manage Excel Add-ins”. Click “Browse” and browse to wherever you saved the Add-in file:

There are a number of functions included in the Add-in – most useful of which are:

subdomain() – returns the domain part of a URL including any subdomains e.g “http://www.example.com/index.htm” becomes “www.example.com”
wwwsubdomain() – basically, a combination of the above, equivalent to “nowww(subdomain(A1))”. This is what you want to use most of the time!
nowww() – removes “www.” from the start of a URL (note that www must be at the very beginning of the URL)
tld() – Returns the TLD of a URL (not 100% perfect but pretty good)
geturl() – Extracts the URL from a Hyperlink

So, getting back to our task, let’s extract domain names from the list of linked cells.

Copy and paste next to the cell you want to extract domain from (copy-paste it all other cells you want to extend the formula to):

=wwwsubdomain(cell)

Do you have your own tips and tricks editing and extracting URLs in Excel? Please share them here!

Speed Up & Troubleshoot MS Office 2007 By Reviewing Your Installed Add-Ins

Saikat Basu — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:31:37 +0000

Yes, MS Office has a quite a few add-ins (plugins) of its own. They do a lot to enhance work productivity when it comes to extending the way we work with documents and presentations.

Do you use any of the 3 Microsoft Word Plugins to Boost Your MS Word Experience? Then there was the one Office add-in called UBitMenu that made MS Office 2007 look like its 2003 predecessor or even give it Firefox like tabs.

But add-ins are not only what you install yourself, many add-ins are, by default, part of the MS Office suite. It doesn’t take long to figure out the advantages of using add-ins. But just like anything extra that piggybacks on a default installation, there are some disadvantages to the use and abuse of Office add-ins. Two of the more clear ones are slowdown of the MS Office program, and program crashes.

A bunch of add-ins can cause a startup delay. As an example, MS Outlook probably has the largest number of add-ins and a startup delay is especially irksome in a program which you use often. A malfunctioning add-in can also cause program crashes. Troubleshooting the cause of a crash involves disabling an add-in to check if it’s the culprit.

It’s during times like these that you need to tackle add-ins and manage them effortlessly. Thankfully, it is.

Going To MS Office Options To View & Manage Add-Ins

MS Office has an in-built add-in manager that is accessible from the Options of each program. Let’s take a look at MS Word and its installed add-ins as an example.

Click the Microsoft Office Button ““ then click Word Options, and then click Add-Ins. The add-ins are listed in the box and arranged according to Type (COM Add-ins, Word Add-ins, Templates etc) and status like Active Application Add-ins, Inactive Application Add-ins, Document Related Add-ins, and Disabled Add-ins.

Just below the box, you can note some extra information like Publisher and a Description on the add-ins function.

To manage your add-ins specific to the MS Office program, select the add-in Type in the Manage box and then click Go.

Select or deselect the check box for the Add-in that you want to enable or disable and then click OK. From the same view, you can choose to remove the add-in or install a new one.

Going To Third Party Free Software For Help

Managing your add-ins from within each program is adequate in itself. Third party free software exist though, that can tell you all the add-ins installed across the MS Office suite. Think of these two programs as a centralized console for your add-in management tasks.

OfficeIns (v1.05)

OfficeIns is a simple 49KB sized Office Add-ins manager that lists all installed Microsoft Office add-ins on your computer, and allows you to disable or enable them. The free software does not need an installation and the add-in information gets saved in the program folder itself. You can select an add-in and opt for any of the four options available ““ Disabled, Load at Startup, Load on Demand, and Load at First Time.

EnableDisable (v1.1)

EnableDisable is another free download for managing your installed Microsoft Office add-ins. The software is a 567KB download and presents a simple tabbed interface for each of the installed Microsoft Office products. Enabling or disabling add-ins is a simple matter of selecting or unselecting the checkbox next to the add-in.

Add-ins as external programs also represents a loophole for malicious attacks. Therefore it is important that you install add-ins from trusted sources. As a safeguard you can set permissions in the MS Office Trust Center that Require Application Add-ins to be signed by Trusted Publisher. All unsigned and unverified add-ins will stand disabled.

A message bar alerts you when you restart the application with a security warning if there is an unsafe Office add-in. Clicking on Options on the message bar gives you the choice of re-enabling the add-on. MS Office has a Help page where these features are explained in detail for all of the programs under the suite.

Check in and tell us about your add-in problems and how you manage them.

Top 3 Websites To Download Useful Free Excel Programs

Simon Slangen — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:31:56 +0000

Excel, Microsoft’s spreadsheet application used by millions, is an incredibly powerful and versatile suite. And yet most users don’t reach past the fancy coloring and simple formulae.

A lot of people don’t realize Excel’s support for the Visual Basic programming language. You can make use of this, even if you’re not a programmer yourself. Pre-written VBA code, often already implemented in Excel files, can be found online.

Below are, without further ado, the top three sources for these free Excel programs.

Microsoft Office Templates

Probably the richest and most extensive repository of free Excel programs is of Microsoft’s own making. On the Microsoft Office website, you’ll find countless pre-built Excel templates. The complexity of, and use for, these templates varies widely, although most of them are clearly intended for business purposes.

So you’ll find everything from pre-built time sheets, financial calculators and academic calendars, but also Excel 3D examples, and even a playable piano octave. The uses are many, and you’ll take a long time to just browse all of these categories.

If you’re a regular spreadsheet user, you can be sure to find your fair share of free Excel programs here, and ultimately save a ton of work.

The only downside is the site’s usability, which could use some improvement. As such, it is impossible to browse the templates by application alone. The best way to work is to find the My Programs field in the left sidebar. Here you can add all Office programs you own, and thus eliminate the better part of superfluous templates.

Although irrelevant (read: empty) categories will still be shown in the category overview, the underlying templates should all be compatible with your version of Excel.

Vertex42 Excel Templates / Financial Calculators

One site, no matter how big, will never show you all that’s available. That’s where our runner-up comes in. Vertex42 is a website dedicated to everything related to Excel – including templates and financial calculators.

Although they deal in smaller numbers, the programs shown are of pristine quality, and make Vertex42 the best unofficial source for Excel programs. A large part of these even work on Open Office as well!

The site’s content is divided up in two major categories; Excel Templates and Financial Calculators. Both of these show a clear overview of the available programs, without any further hassle with filters. In that, Vertex42 has clearly bested the Microsoft Office official templates site.

Excel Games

Combined, Microsoft Office and Vertex42 should be able to fill the needs of serious businesses. This last website is complementary, and wouldn’t be considered ‘useful’ by all parties.

Visual Basic of course isn’t limited to dull timetables and financial calculators. If you’re stuck at work and limited to the games already installed on your computer, you can use Visual Basic in Excel to play games – and if you put some big numbers in the next tab, you can quickly switch panes when your supervisor sneaks a peek. Don’t forget to move some serious work, though. These games won’t pay the bills if you get yourself fired!

The Excel Games site boosts just under forty different games, mostly classics like Pong, Battleship, Tetris, Bubbles and a variety of card games. These are all downloadable as simple XLS files – also compatible with older versions of Excel.

Do you know any other sources for useful, free Excel programs?

15 Useful Excel Templates for Project Management & Tracking

Steve Campbell — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:31:03 +0000

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. Without setting measurable goals and keeping track of various efforts and resources, projects don’t stand a chance of seeing a successful completion.

There are many useful tools out there for project management. One such program you can utilize to keep track of your projects is Microsoft Excel. With Excel’s free templates, you can turn your simple spreadsheets into project management charts and forms.

In this article, I am going to cover a few of the most useful Excel project management tracking templates as well as how to find and install them.

Microsoft Templates

First, it would be wise to see what templates you already have installed in Excel. For the purposes of this article, I will be using Excel 2007, although this procedure should be pretty similar in the Office 2003 and 2010 suites.

When you start up Excel, click on the Office Button in the top left and go to New. A New Workbook box should have popped up where you can select from different templates.

Under Installed Templates, you can view the templates that came with your version of Office. If you don’t have any project management templates installed (I didn’t), you can view the online templates by clicking on the various categories below. When you find one you like, just click on it and click the Download button.

Here are some of the useful Excel project management tracking templates I found:

Plans (Business)

If you go down to Plans and select Business, you will find a lot of helpful templates. I especially liked these templates:

Projected balance sheet.
Project team communication plan.
Business project timeline, schedule, calendar, plan.

Planners

If you select Planners from the list, you will see about 35 planning and scheduling templates that could be used for your project management needs. Some of the better templates in this category include:

Simpler and Intuitive Task Management – X-TrackAmaze Basic.
Work – Weekly Planner.
Project planner.

Search For Online Templates

If you would like to search for your desired templates by name instead, you can do so at the top of the New Workbook box. You can try running searches for the terms project, gantt, time, and schedule.

Since I have already done this for you (you can thank me later), you only need to search for the templates I’ve provided. Here are some of the keepers:

Project scorecard.
Project cost summary.
Project time performance tracking.
Event management project tracker.
Project performance tracking and reporting.

You can also find all of these templates online here.

Vertex42 Templates

This website has a few great project management templates of its own. As the site states, these templates are mostly related to project scheduling and that anything more complicated would probably require Microsoft Project or other project management software.

For the purposes of Excel, here are the free templates they offer:

Conclusion

We’ve covered a lot of great project management apps in the past. If you would like to find more free templates online, simply run a Google search for ‘free Excel project management tracking templates’. There are many sites that offer both free and paid templates, so you want to make sure you’re in a site’s free section.

What do you think of the templates I’ve provided? Will you be using them for your project management needs? What other apps besides Excel do you like to use for managing your projects?

Please leave your thoughts, ideas, and comments below.

Image Credit: tome213

Use Microsoft Office for Free with Microsoft Web Apps

Matt Smith — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:30:29 +0000

Google Documents has its problems. Its features are not comprehensive enough for truly serious office work, and it can be a bit slow and finicky when compared to a traditional office program. Still, Google Documents has started a revolution. The ability to access a document from any computer and share it with co-workers is immensely useful.

Microsoft knows this. It has been flat-footed so far, as the company’s investments in the mighty Microsoft Office Suite can’t be turned on (or with) a dime. They are not blind to the situation and to respond, Microsoft has released Microsoft Web Apps, a set of free applications which emulate the functions of Google Documents.

There Is Some Office In My Firefox

Microsoft’s new Web Apps platform is accessed through Windows Live. If you have a Windows Live account you just need to log into it and you’re good to go. If you don’t have a Windows Live account you will need to create one before you gain access.

Once you log in, you will be greeted by what Microsoft calls Skydrive. The Skydrive is simply your online storage. It works a lot like a normal hard drive, although of course, you have to access it through your web browser. You can create new folders for storing and sharing documents and you can move documents from folder to folder. The interface is different from Google Documents, but not quite as robust in functionality. You can’t view documents as thumbnails, for example.

What Can You Buy For Free?

As you might expect, the functionality of Microsoft Web Apps is limited compared to the complete Microsoft Office suite. You will only be able to use web-based versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote. The functionality of each Web App is limited when compared to the full version, as well. The Word Web App, for example, is only really suitable for basic text editing. You an also add photos and links, but that is about it. You can’t add comments, create annotations or edit footers.

If you already own the Microsoft Office suite, however, you’ll be able to open any Web App document in the full version of Microsoft Office. The value of this feature can’t be overstated. While browser-based office suites are interesting, they are never as smooth or as functional as a office suite installed on your local machine. By integrating the ability to open a Web App document with just one click Microsoft gives Office users the best of both worlds.

The interface of Microsoft’s Web App’s will be immediately familiar if you use Microsoft Office. This means that is better than other popular free suites, like Google Documents and Zoho. Rather than relying on old-fashion drop-down menus, Microsoft Web Apps follows a more modern tabbed design aesthetics. Icons are large and intuitive, and the most frequently needed functions are represented by large buttons which are easy to find. I was able to start using Microsoft Web Apps in no time at all.

A Real Alternative to Google Documents?

It is easy to pigeon-hole Microsoft as the senile old curmudgeon of the tech world, slowly dying as it makes desperate attempts to keep with the times. This portrayal is common (those lovely “I’m a Mac” ads didn’t help) but it is starting to seem inaccurate.

Microsoft’s Web Apps is an extremely solid platform. Its interface is actually better than that of Google Documents in many respects. Microsoft’s Web Apps also feels even quicker than Google Documents, which is by no means a slouch when it comes to speed. I noticed this somewhat when I was using Word, but the biggest speed difference seemed to come in the presentation apps. Microsoft’s Powerpoint Web App felt a lot smoother than Google’s implementation.

It is the integration with the paid version of Office that is killer, however. As an dedicated OpenOffice user, I’m now considering actually purchasing Microsoft Office 2010 just to gain access one-click integration with Microsoft’s Web Apps. If any OpenOffice users out there know a way to enable similar functionality for OpenOffice I’d love to hear it.

Ribbon Hero – Boost Your Microsoft Office Skills With This Fun Add-on

Saikat Basu — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:31:53 +0000

We normally don’t associate the word “fun” or “play” with Microsoft. Pinball and Minesweeper are fine”¦but hey, a game for Microsoft Office? This is where the guys from Redmond have got off the well trodden path and done something that’s downright unique.

Microsoft has introduced a Microsoft Office training game called Ribbon Hero that attempts to fill the learning gap for new users as well as Microsoft Office old hands who just can’t find their way with the Ribbon.

The feelings towards Microsoft’s interface enhancing Ribbon (the panel that has all the commands and icons arranged in tabs) has been somewhat mixed. It was a departure from the old vertical menu approach, which brought in a learning curve. The Ribbon is meant to be a “˜Fluent User Interface‘. It is meant to enhance speed and productivity by putting the oft used commands right in front of our face.

Despite the changes, one thing has remained constant ““ some of us are unaware about how to use MS Office to the max. There are easier ways to do certain things and then there are ways to do a lot of things with Microsoft’s Office suite. We sometimes fall short in both.

That’s where Ribbon Hero is supposed to come and give us a hand, in a fun and engaging sort of way. Ribbon Hero is also a well timed idea because from Office 2010 onwards, all applications will come with the Ribbon.

So throw out your “˜Dummies’ guides, shut off the help file and start off with the free “˜n small Ribbon Hero Microsoft Office training download. Ribbon Hero installs itself in Office applications (Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007) and of course, where else but on the Ribbon?

Office Play

Do you see the round green icon sitting on the Ribbon all alone? When at first, you go your own way, working on a document and using some functions here and there, the little white digits indicate the points you are adding up doing your Office functions.

Each command has certain scores and with some you will score more than others. For instance, applying Styles will give you more than just normal formatting.

Clicking on the Ribbon Hero button takes you to the Microsoft Office training interface. The first thing you see is the Points Breakdown.

All the fun and games are arranged around the three sections ““ Working with Text, Page Design and Layout, and Getting Artistic.

Clicking on each section showcases on the right all what you can follow and learn. For instance, one of the lessons under Getting Artistic is on playing around with Shape orders.

You can also get to the lessons by clicking on the small arrow for the Challenge List. Ribbon Hero puts in challenges for you to play, to expose you to new features.

Clicking on Play Challenge opens up a new document with a lesson and instructions. Get a better idea of what’s required from a Before and After snapshot given right below the instructions. This is how it looks ““

Now you just have to follow the instructions laid out and complete the task. If you are stuck, take a Hint. You can also take a peek at a small preview of the step.

If you get it right, there’s the ring of congratulations and a few celebratory balloons as a cheer. You can apply the lessons learnt with some real world working to boost your Ribbon score.

Ribbon Hero brings in some Facebook social sharing. Post your scores on Facebook and check the leaderboard to see if you are on the same class as your friends. Every 100 points earned by you prompts Ribbon Hero to ask you if you would like to publish it on Facebook’s newsfeed.

For me, Ribbon Hero is proving to be a shorter hop towards improving my MS Office craft. Citing my own example, my score zoomed up in MS Word, but took a beating in MS Excel. To please my ego, I am using Ribbon Hero more as a guide for MS Excel. I check up on the categories and see how it has been done.

What I Am Learning

Learning + Fun = Better Learning.

This equation is always true and more so for the digital age.. Think of the seconds you can shave off by executing a command in a speedier way. The seconds can snowball into minutes with a long document, spreadsheet or presentation. A few rounds with Ribbon Hero and we can well become MS Office experts. The great thing is that it would be achieved without the help of a boring help guide or the guy in the next cubicle.

The only slight problem I found was that the word count stopped working. That’s a rough edge but it’s still a Microsoft Office Labs application on a test drive.

So, let the games begin.

Your thoughts matter. Use Ribbon Hero and let us know if it’s a dumb, good or a great idea.

Ribbon Hero works on Microsoft Office 2007/2010 (both 32/64 Bit) and for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint only. Find out some more rules for the game from Jennifer Michelstein, the brain behind the project.