Comments on: Automator workflows for Excel

Question: Automator workflows for Excel

lackutrol — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:50:41 -0800

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?

By: zixyer

zixyer — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:47:26 -0800

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?

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:10:49 -0800

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.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:46:14 -0800

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

By: zixyer

zixyer — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:50:05 -0800

Yeah, this sounds too complex for Automator, but perfect for VBA...

By: mkultra

mkultra — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:40:52 -0800

Isn't VBA for Mac dead?

By: cschneid

cschneid — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:55:12 -0800

mkultra: next version of office for mac, yes, but the current 2004 version still has it.