Page 31 - Excel Progamming Weekend Crash Course

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6 Friday Evening

Saving Time

Just about anything that a program can do in Excel can also be accomplished by a user with
a keyboard and mouse. In a race, however, the program is always faster. Even if you are an
expert user and do not need to spend any time figuring out how to perform the required
tasks, a program will still beat you by a huge margin. What might take you half an hour to
perform manually will be done in a few seconds by a program.

Reducing Errors
Even the most skilled typist hits the wrong key now and then, and every “mouse master”
has been known to click the wrong button or command once in a while. In contrast, pro-
grams do not make mistakes — they are reliable servants, carrying out your commands over
and over again with complete accuracy.
This is not to say that programs cannot contain errors. A program will do exactly what
the programmer tells it to do; if your instructions are wrong or incomplete, the resulting
program can cause errors. Dealing with program errors is an important topic, enough so that
an entire session is devoted to it.

Enforcing Standards
In many organizations, adherence to data-processing standards is an important aspect of
maximizing productivity. For example, each sales representative may be required to submit
a weekly summary spreadsheet. If those spreadsheets all follow the same structure and for-
mat, it is fairly straightforward to automate the process of extracting data into a summary
report. The slightest deviation from the proper format, however, is likely to throw a wrench
into the gears. By using programming for the individual spreadsheets rather than manual
data entry, you can ensure that there are no deviations from the correct spreadsheet format.

Integrating with Other Applications

Excel does not always work alone — it has the capability to share data and interact with
other applications. These capabilities are most developed with, but not restricted to, other
Microsoft Office applications. For example, an Excel program could use Outlook to create an
e-mail message containing data from a spreadsheet and then send the message to a list of
recipients. Programming is not required for Excel to interact with other programs, but it
makes tasks possible that would be difficult or impractical to perform otherwise.

Programming Fundamentals
What exactly is programming? It’s really not as mysterious as it may sound. Perhaps you
already have some experience with computer programming of one sort of another. If not, this
section gives you some background information about what programming is and how it works.