So here’s a new post on something I’ve been using for years. A simple actionlist that has grown to a tool I use very often. Maybe ‘tool’ sounds complicated, but it really isn’t, I guess thats part of why I like it so much. So what is it? In its essence its a way of working to get your project meetings done efficiently. As a side effect I created a spreadsheet with several tabs for listing actions, issues, risks and the like for a project. Over the years it changed to reflect my way of working, so maybe its better to elaborate on that before explaining the sheet. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Office
Storing data in a Base64 encoding using VBA
Here’s some code that I’m pretty proud of, its a nifty piece of code that allows to store any kind of data in a simple textbased container. It uses a custom Base64 encoding to store integers, floats, strings, booleans or blobs in a text block and adds some CRC checks and even some repair capabilities.
INI style settings in a string using VBA
In VBA you may occasionally want to store some settings outside of the document. The registry is one way, but I often try to keep it in INI files as automated documents get spread through email easily, but usually do not get ‘uninstalled’ hence the settings will never be cleaned up. I’d rather leave an orphaned file than polute the registry. Other advantages are that its easier to support because a user can email them, or its easier to edit by a user.
Forcing Excel users to enable macros
Often if you create an Excel workbook with some automation features, you want to make sure that users enable macros to be sure the workbook behaves as designed. You can built in as many verification features as you want, but if the macros are disabled, they just won’t work.
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Attribute statements in VBA
If you’ve ever opened a VBA code file with a text editor, you’ve probably noticed the “attribute” statements at the start of the file. Even though you cannot modify these in the VBA editor, they allow you to add some spice to your VBA code. Continue reading
Catching all changes on an Outlook folder
I found events in microsoft outlook to be unreliable. If a modal dialog box is open (eg. MsgBox or InputBox) or a piece of code takes to long to complete, events in the background will be cancelled. This class tries to catch the Add and Change events of a folder but will also check, after handling an item, if additional changes have occured and will then handle those subsequentially. Continue reading