Automator workflows for Excel

November 18, 2007 4:50 PM

Automator as an antidote to Excel tedium. Can you help me get through repetitive tasks with favorite Automator tricks in Leopard?

I would like to be able to open a new Excel workbook, create worksheets based on an existing list, and copy formatting to each sheet. Can you point out Web resources for an Automator amateur, whether general or for Excel in particular?

posted by lackutrol to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I don't understand how what you're trying to do can't be achieved by simply creating an Excel template.

Does the list of worksheets you want to create vary? Where are you storing the list?
posted by zixyer at 5:47 PM on November 18, 2007

Well, it would pull data from an existing sheet to name each sheet, then add formatting and/or data according to the data in the name of the sheet, ideally. So, for example, if the name of the sheet (which is being pulled from an existing sheet) included x, the new sheet would include y formatting and z data, whereas if the name of the sheet included a, the new sheet would include b formatting and c data.
posted by lackutrol at 6:10 PM on November 18, 2007

Admittedly, I'm useless with automator, but this looks like it'd be a VBA sort of task - which would give you the advantage of having all the excel formatty stuff exposed to the VBA environment, rather than trying to automate stuff.

>it would pull data from an existing sheet to name each sheet,

something like:

sheets.add
activesheet.name = sheets("oldsheet").range("B27").value
if activesheet.name = "blah"
do blah
else
don't do blah
posted by pompomtom at 6:46 PM on November 18, 2007

Yeah, this sounds too complex for Automator, but perfect for VBA...
posted by zixyer at 9:50 PM on November 18, 2007

Isn't VBA for Mac dead?
posted by mkultra at 5:40 AM on November 19, 2007

mkultra: next version of office for mac, yes, but the current 2004 version still has it.
posted by cschneid at 2:55 PM on November 19, 2007