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Author Topic: SOLVED: Excel Page Spinoff Generator  (Read 4057 times)

TaoPhoenix

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SOLVED: Excel Page Spinoff Generator
« on: December 15, 2011, 05:48 AM »
Suppose you have a big excel worksheet. You're tracking the overview data of something. Then a subsidiary page would cover the details.

It would be useful if you could select X rows, and then the utility spins off brand new workbooks (or tabs in the existing workbook) based on that index file, *with that line of data in the workbook*!

Think about it. Let's say you have 100 CD's in your collection. Select all the rows, have a way to pick the file name, (maybe "choose columns 1 and 4 for the file name) and Zoom! You now have 100 spinoff workbooks. Then you can go later and add song names, and comments, and band members etc.

Or, at work, you have all the Potential jobs, and then you spinoff pages to track them separately. Do y'all know how many HOURS that saves over "Take blank workbook, copy and paste the file name, open it, copy the data row, close it."

I could see this mattering for text files too.

Not sure what funny name we can/should add to it, I giggle a little that it's like the page is "breeding like rabbits or bugs", or maybe "Nova" where it explodes. If it's robust, it can spinoff thousands of new workbooks.

Quick features would also be "Explode Tabs Into Workbooks", and do it in reverse, "DeNova Workbooks into Tabs."

In case someone is missing the 1-up Combo here, you can run a directory-reader (like Karen's), which then gives you a giant text file output, import the text file into Excel, do Select All, hit Nova, and then you have an Excel tracker page for every file on your system.

Not sure if that's easy enough to be a "snack", I dunno how hard making Excel utilities its - at its core this idea only has about 4 features and maybe 3 settings. (There's always room for features if someone wants to make it a Meal instead of a Snack, but no need to feed the football team either. Very simple second generation features would be like "Data-Cell order in original source --> data order in output page", to cover the case that in the original super index the data could be huge, maybe 20 columns, then you only need columns 1 4 2 13 8 in the spinoff page.)

((Random shout out to Anand plugging Paste Text Like, I Proper Cased some stuff in this post. Whee!))

TaoPhoenix

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Re: SOLVED: Excel Page Spinoff Generator
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2011, 10:20 AM »

Update:

ASAP Excel Utilities does this! So I am satisfied with this topic too.