This post started off as an excuse to experiment with Google Docs, and this really neat feature I discovered - embedding a spreadsheet in a web page as a sharing method. However, it struck me as a potential way to cost justify the time, effort, and expense of implementing collaboration systems with the Most Cynical Among Us. We've all been in large meetings, with tens of people from the project team, along with the expensive consultants, sitting around a table…
I am getting seriously aggravated with the flighty behavior of Excel 2007. Yes, I acknowledge that the spreadsheets in question is quite complicated ... shared VBA modules in an XLA file database read/write using ADO array-manipulation for ranges of cells (see this post) lots of macro (VBA) logic to control look/feel of the tabs code to automatically insert formulae into cells ... and so on. However, some of the observed flightiness is specific to the UberSheet, while other weirdness happens…
I've done a lot of coding over the past few years, on a number of platforms - but since I'm not a full time developer, it's typically limited to VBA, PHP, SQL, some simple web stuff. Still, I've developed some tools that people use - and need to carry forward as the underlying technology moves along. And so, as I've finally made the leap to Office 2007, I had to come to terms with yet another VBA upgrade. I remember…
Here's a typical IT scenario: each quarter, you need to check audit user access to a critical application. Your internal security standards require that you revoke access for those who haven't been on the system for over 90 days. I've seen this before, and the process (at the time) had many challenges: It's manual; we did a quick-and-dirty set of steps years ago to cover the minimum requirements, that involves extracts from application logs, file transfers MS Access and MS…