Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer today!

[dk]

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! Here in Oz the party is long over and we have the hangovers to prove it

Anyway, I've written an add-in for Excel that I'd like to get some feedback and testing on. I've written it using Excel 2003 but would like to get it tested on as many different versions as possible.

The add-in allows you to maintain a Favourites list in Excel, much like the Favorites in Internet Explorer. You can save favourite folders and files and quickly access them by either clicking File, Favourites or right-clicking in a worksheet and choosing the Favourites menu item. I wrote this for work as I was fed up with constantly navigating from something like G:\004Accounting\Transport\Tran_acc\XLFILES\Planning and Budgeting\Elle\Northern Region and back to H:\Development\Elle and then off somewhere else.

I know some of you may be thinking that Excel already provides this functionality with the Add to Favorites option in the Open dialog box but it seems to have disappeared in Office 2003 (haven't fully investigated). Also, I prefer to keep my favourites as websites, not clog it up with file favourites.

Anyway, you can download the file from here. Any feedback can be posted here or sent to dan@danielklann.com.

This is not a commercial project, just something that I'd like to get tested. Hopefully some of you may find it useful.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Ken Puls]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Hello again,

I've also played with it a bit on Office 97 (win 2000 server platform... not that the o/s makes any difference) and it seems to work fine here too.

The face ID seems the same between 2003 and 97, just for reference.

Lastly, I have added the add-in to a rather novice excel user, who was absolutely thrilled! It's going to save her a bunch of time also...

Cheers,

 

[TommyGun]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Lastly, I have added the add-in to a rather novice excel user, who was absolutely thrilled! It's going to save her a bunch of time also...

Anyway, the add-in is indeed a time-saving tool and makes the XL-life more easier to live with

I am already finding that the add-in is very handy

Just downloaded this Dan, very cool - have distributed this to some of my more compotent colleagues for their feed back also.

So dk...you gonna start charging for this thing?

 

[XL-Dennis]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Tommy,

I thought You were of and respond *all* unanswered questions here :wink:

Once free always free so I guess it is too late for charging $9.90...

Kind regards,
Dennis

 

[TommyGun]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Will be starting on the unanswered questions soon.

 

[gaynard_nelson]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Daniel

I like your add in, but I have several hundred customer spreadsheets in separate folders and some sub folders. When I set up favorites I prefer to set them to Folders NOT individual files. Reduces the number of favorites I have to sift through. Individual file favorites would be unwieldy. Is it possible to modify so you could add folders and / or files.

While I was playing with it I wound up with an orphan Favorite on my file menu and on the right mouse menu popup. Is there any easy way to remove them?

Very ingenious program!

 

[dk]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

<snipped>

So dk...you gonna start charging for this thing?

No Tommy, the positive feedback is payment enough (reaches for sickbag ) Seriously, it only took me a few hours to knock up the code and a bit longer tweaking it.

Regards,
Dan

 

[gaynard_nelson]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Daniel

I like your add in, but I have several hundred customer spreadsheets in separate folders and some sub folders. When I set up favorites I prefer to set them to Folders NOT individual files. Reduces the number of favorites I have to sift through. Individual file favorites would be unwieldy. Is it possible to modify so you could add folders and / or files.

01/05/04-I found out later that I can add Folders as favorites by using the organize button. I can add Files or Folders. Very fexable. Just whar I wanted!

While I was playing with it I wound up with an orphan Favorite on my file menu and on the right mouse menu popup. Is there any easy way to remove them? 01/25/04-I still have this problem. Looks like I may have to reinstall Excel 2000 to get rid of these orphans.

Very ingenious program!

 

[Ken Puls]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Hi Gaynard,

You shouldn't need to reinstall Office 2000. Try the following code to get rid of the orphans. (Adapted from dk's procedures...)

Sub RemoveByCaption()
    Dim ComCtl As CommandBarControl

    For Each ComCtl In Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls
        If ComCtl.Caption = "&Favourites" Then ComCtl.Delete
    Next ComCtl
    For Each ComCtl In Application.CommandBars("File").Controls
        If ComCtl.Caption = "&Favourites" Then ComCtl.Delete
    Next ComCtl

End Sub

If that doesn't work, you can return the true full name of the captions from the cell menu by using this:

sub CellCaptionNames
    Dim ComCtl As CommandBarControl

    For Each ComCtl In Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls
        ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A65536").End
(xlUp).Offset(1, 0) = ComCtl.Caption
    Next ComCtl
End Sub

You'd then pick out the caption name, and replace "&Favourites" with it, run the code again, and it should clear...

HTH,

 

[gaynard_nelson]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

Hi Gaynard,

You shouldn't need to reinstall Office 2000. Try the following code to get rid of the orphans. (Adapted from dk's procedures...)

Sub RemoveByCaption()
    Dim ComCtl As CommandBarControl

    For Each ComCtl In Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls
        If ComCtl.Caption = "&Favourites" Then ComCtl.Delete
    Next ComCtl
    For Each ComCtl In Application.CommandBars("File").Controls
        If ComCtl.Caption = "&Favourites" Then ComCtl.Delete
    Next ComCtl
End Sub

If that doesn't work, you can return the true full name of the captions from the cell menu by using this:

sub CellCaptionNames
    Dim ComCtl As CommandBarControl

    For Each ComCtl In Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls
        ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A65536").End
(xlUp).Offset(1, 0) = ComCtl.Caption
    Next ComCtl
End Sub

You'd then pick out the caption name, and replace "&Favourites" with it, run the code again, and it should clear...

HTH,

Thanks very much! That worked like a charm. This board has some very knowledgeable people.

Thanks again.

 

[dk]

Re: Testers Wanted-Feel good about yourself and volunteer to

OK, I've received heaps of feedback via email but I still need people to try this addin out. I've made some significant changes to the code and removed some of the bugs/annoyances. A question I would like an answer to is : Do I need to have the Favourites menu item on the File menu or is the one where you right-click a worksheet enough?

You can download the latest version from this page : http://www.danielklann.com/excel/excel_favourites_add-in.htm

Thanks for reading. Any feedback can be posted here or sent to dan@danielklann.com

Cheers,
Dan