Good day all. This is going to be a long reply. I have reached the point where I realize that I have been the problem all along in this venture. I apologize for that. I can see where I provided requests and answers to your responses that did not express the complete situation. I have been working with this Forum since 2006 having posted 391 entries. To date, they have all been completed with a few needing extra replies. I have learned quite bit in that time, but I am nowhere near being as proficient as those of you who have been part of this venture. I have created some formulas that I am proud of due to their complexity, but I am having trouble understanding some of the functions listed in the responses to this issue. I have not had any formal Excel training, which is probably part of the problem. Everything that I have done in the last 20 years has been learned by experimentation and by help from this Forum. I would be lost without the Forum.
With all of that said, let me detail once more, from the beginning, what I have and what I would like to be able to do. Some of this may sound extreme, but I want to make all the conditions known. Over the last 15 years I have been creating a Music folder on my computer. That folder is titled “MP3 normalized” and resides in a folder titled “Music” on the “C” drive. The folder contains songs of 32 different Genres from 1940 to 2001. The music was used as a library for a radio show that I hosted for 10 years from 2004 to 2014. After retiring from the corporate world in 2014, I ended the radio show and moved. My goal now is to create and publish a weekly music show on the internet using the music in my library. There is also the probability that I will be adding more songs to the music library as this venture continues. The music folder at this point contains almost 5,000 songs, all edited and stored in MP3 format, ready to use. Part of the editing of each song was to insert items in the Shell Properties of each file to identify particulars such as the Intro time, Chart Number, Title (without the .mp3 file extension), Artist, Year of release, Length. Genre, and Extras (miscellaneous data).
In order to make the music list more usable, it became necessary to obtain a Macro that would access each song in the music folder and place the desired Shell Properties into the worksheet. That was accomplished under another request answered by Eric W. The reply was a Macro that ran on a worksheet titled “Home”. When executed, the Macro created a second worksheet titled “DB” that contained all the songs from the music folder showing the 8 columns of data from the Shell Properties. This worksheet is apparently not in Table Format. At that point, I then asked if someone could provide a Macro to search for a given Genre (one of the worksheet Columns). This is where the process became complicated because I did not make my desires clear. Rather than go through all the mess that I created, let me define as clearly as I can what I want to do.
The Macro that creates the DB worksheet does exactly what I want. Here is what I want to able to do after the DB worksheet is created:
1. Search the DB worksheet for a particular Genre and return all the songs that match that Genre in a new worksheet titled with the Genre and contain the 8 Columns of data for each song.
2. The new worksheet with the desired Genre matches should remain in place and not be replaced by another Genre search.
3. Search the DB for another Genre and return all the songs that match that Genre in another new worksheet titled with the Genre as done in item 1.
4. This process needs to able to be done for any number of Genres, but not all 32 Genres.
5. The Macro that does the Genre search must allow me to add functions to copy Row 1 of the DB (Column titles), set the Column Width, Column Format, Bordering, Top Row Freeze, Center the Column titles in Row 1, Set Columns A, B, and H to Wrap Text, Page Layout to Landscape and any other display functions that may be needed.
6. Once the Genre search Macro is completed, I can then add the functions described above, store each Macro in the Developer Modules with each Macro being titled by the Genre to be found.
7. I can then create a separate worksheet containing Command Buttons that will execute a Genre search by choice.
The reasons for the conditions above will allow me to renew the entire process as new songs are added to the music folder. When the time comes to include newly added songs to the music folder, I can create a completely new workbook containing the Home worksheet with the Macro to create the DB worksheet and copy all the Genre search Macros into that workbook as well. I feel confident enough to edit the Macros as necessary. The weekly radio show may also go in different directions each week, requiring music selections from different Genres. At this point, I have no desire to try and learn Tables as I do not think that would work with the conditions expressed above.
You have all gone out of your way to provide me with answers that will work, but so far the answers are leading me in a direction that I know nothing about or do not conform the requirements posted above. There appear to be a multitude of functions and options included in the suggested Macros that I do not understand yet. I do hope that I am not asking for too much. If so, please let me know. I can do what I want manually with what I currently have, it will just take longer. Thank you for getting this far and I hope to hear from someone.
Dan Wilson...