The Amazing Chase is Back!

Hey everyone,

It's that time of year again -- time for the Amazing Chase. This is a super-fun fundraiser, modeled after the television series The Amazing Race, put on by St. Monica's Behvioral Health Services for Women. My team, "Scared Hitless" actually won this last year. Last year we raised over $2,500, which started us in 5th, but we were able to make it up. The competition looks fierce this year, though, so we're gunning for $4,000.

The first leg of the race involves raising money for St. Monica's. The more we raise, the better starting time we get. Here's where you come in. Here's a quick, easy way to support my team. Any little bit you can afford helps. AND, for one lucky donor, I'll throw in a free $50 Project.

Thanks in advance to everyone who helps.

Later,

Excel_Geek

Parsing Google Search Results for URLs

I had a visitor on the blog yesterday who was interested in my old Google search results parsing code. Apparently he found Goohackle's Gooparser and liked what it does -- i.e. return just a clean list of URLs from the search results of Google -- but wanted a way around the limit for the number of results and a way to pull them directly into Excel.

Voila!

I cleaned up the old code for him. The result is a nice, clean worksheet that returns just the URLs from Google search results pages. You can set how many results per page and pages you'd like to return. Be careful, though, as if you hit Google too many times too quickly, they'll start to block you, asking you for your API key, etc. I've built in a random pause (3 to 7 seconds) between the pages in a multi-page query in an effort to prevent this from happening, but no guarantees. Google is a pretty sophisticated outfit, so they may still be able to detect an automated harvesting of data without using the API.

Geoff, enjoy the file. Insiders, the file's on the way.

Later,

Excel_Geek

Updated UPC Barcode Generator

Remember back when I told you about a $50 Project where I created a handy little UPC barcode generator in Excel? I noticed after that post I receive a meaningful amount of traffic from search engines based on phrases like "barcode generator" and the like. I kept wondering who those people were. Well, not that long ago I found out who at least one of them is: a guy named Ian.

Ian contacted me and wanted me to tweak the barcode generator I had built to suit his needs. Instead of generating one UPC barcode image at a time that he could copy-paste as he needs, he wanted to be able to generate long lists of UPC barcode images and save them as .JPEG files, so that he could later use a mail merge type function to pull them into documents as he needed. Sweet idea. Seemed pretty straightforward...

Turns out that getting those images I created using the little known camera feature in Excel exported to .JPEG files is not so simple. What I ended up doing is creating on the fly what is essentially a blank chart object and them filling it with the image, then exporting the chart as an image using the Chart.Export function in VBA. Whew. Here's a screen shot:



(Click the image to see a larger version.)

For a long list (hundreds or thousands of UPC codes) the process can take some time to complete, so I also threw in a little feature I've been doing when run times last more than a few seconds -- a little progress bar screen. It's essentially another normally hidden tab in the file that appears during run time to show the user how far along they are. Looks cool, too, I don't mind saying:



(Click the image to see a larger version.)

Ian, hope the file's everything you were hoping for.

Excel_Geek Insiders, your copy of the file's on it's way.

Later,

Excel_Geek

Testing the new Twitterfeed.

Oooooo...I'm gettin' all fancy now, I guess. Just another venue for my followers to received updates. Also, I think I might have a solution, now, for a past client looking for a way to regularly update his followers via email. Here's what I mean.

Later,

Excel_Geek

2008 March Madness NCAA Basketball Bracket

Selection Sunday is over. I've updated my handy little bracket spreadsheet with the selected teams. Those who'd like to download and use it, here's the drill:

1. Click here to send me $3.00 via PayPal.
2. Once you've made the payment, you should land back on a page to download the file. If for some reason that doesn't work properly, click here to download the file.
3. Open the file, making sure you can enable the macros -- that is, your Macro security is set to Medium at highest (Tools --> Macros --> Macro Security). Take note of the "lock code" it gives you.
4. Email me your lock code, and I'll send you back an associated "key code" that unlocks the file for your use. This code is specific to you and the computer you are using. If you want to use the file on numerous computers, let me know, and I'll see if I can accommodate you.

Good luck with your picks!

Excel_Geek Insiders, if you'd like to use the file, simply download it, and email me your "lock code", I'll send you the "key code" as part of your subscription.

Later,

Excel_Geek

Prepopulating a Userform

Just recently I banged out a quick little example for a reader who wanted to know how to quickly and easily store values from a userform created using VBA, and then prepopulate the userform the next time it's brought up with those stored values. Basically, I created a new worksheet in the file that would remain hidden and had a named ranged in that worksheet for each field in the userform. Then, when the userform was called up, I grabbed the values from those named ranges and put them in the inputs in the form. Then, when the userform was submitted, I changed the values in those named ranges to those currently in the userform. Pretty slick.


Like so many things Excel+VBA, it's easy when you know how. I thought my Excel_Geek Insiders would appreciate this simple example.

Later,

Excel_Geek

(how about that, three posts in one day after two months with nothing...can you tell I've been busy?)

A Way Around Web Query Limitations

The other day I got another request for a project that involved pulling data from a website into a spreadsheet. It was a situation where data needed to be posted to a form on the web page to get to the data that was desired. In this case, the user needed to post a start date and end date to the form to return a table of data the he wanted to pull into the spreadsheet. It was a situation that on many web pages would have been super easy using Excel's built-in web query tool and the little known ".posttext" property.

However, due to the way in which this page was built this method wasn't working. A web developer friend speculated it was due to the fact that the page was built using ASP.NET, which complicates a simple form with all kinds of behind the scenes javascript. I couldn't even get the form to post using the POST method of the MSXML.ServerXMLHTTP object (see this old post).

In the end, what I had to do was actually invoke an Internet Explorer session using the "InternetExplorer.Application" object. Once the session was created and I programatically navigated to the desired URL, I was able to identify inputs in the form by ID and put the data needed into each one, then programatically "click" the submit button on the form. Once the new page with the data table loaded, I could select the table of data again by ID, and go through each row and column in the table and pull the data into the spreadsheet. This was actually slicker than if I used my old MSXML.ServerXMLHTTP object method and used Regular Expressions to parse out the data.

This was a fun little learning experience, and I hope you Excel_Geek Insiders enjoy this code. It can be very helpful.

Later,

Excel_Geek