Comments on: Building Formulas

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:22:00 +0000

Hi Dick,

This is an interesting concept and i've enjoyed playing around with it. However, it doesn't work so well when refering to multi-cell ranges of any kind. For example

ColA ColB ColC
1 =A1 =INDEX(B1:B3,2)
1 2
1 =A3

Currently the INDEX formula returns a value of 2. However if you apply your macro then the formula becomes:

=INDEX((A1):(A3), 2)

Which changes the returned value to 1. Not really ideal.

Whilst I would trust myself recognise formulas where using this functionality would be dnagerous, I would hesitate before recommending it to everyone.

Fantastic to see new innovation like this though.

Kind Regards

Charlie

By: Mike M.

Mike M. — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:02:00 +0000

Recently, I came across an interesting article in the Inside Excel periodical (november 2004 issue), where they were merging cells without loss of contents - In a way very similar to your build Formula. They had some interesting validation code. See Merge.zip at http://download.elementkjournals.com/excel/200411/

By: Jonathan Rynd

Jonathan Rynd — Thu, 05 Aug 2004 16:26:00 +0000

This doesn't work if your formula references both A1 and A10 (the A10 gets replaced by (contents of A1)0, or A1 and AA1 (the AA1 gets replaced by A(contents of A1), or if your formula both references A1 and has the text "A1? in a string.

You need to make sure that the characters before and after the cell reference are not letters or numbers, and that you're not inside a quoted string.

The parentheses are essential. You didn't overdo it.

By: Andy Miller

Andy Miller — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 20:50:00 +0000

That's very cool!

I'm not sure I'd have much use for it, but the concept is cool and I could see some people making use of it (rather than copying and pasting).