Comments on: Work Breakdown Structure Numbering in Excel

By: work breakdown structure

work breakdown structure — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 03:20:00 +0000

Here is a good work breakdown structure example, not in excel but in a visual representation. The key is to breakdown the work/project into manageable activities and tasks. http://ygraph.com/chart/1430

By: Matthew Pfluger

Matthew Pfluger — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:40:00 +0000

@mlewis, send me an email at p|f|l|u|g|s|3|0@gmail.com, and I'll send you an example file with full source code.

Matthew

By: mlewis

mlewis — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:23:00 +0000

I am a newbie to building functions and macros for Excel, and for that matter VB. Could you please give me an example of the parameter values for (ByVal lLevelCol As Integer, ByVal lStartRow As Long)? I am a bit confused. For the example above, would lLvelCol be 1 and lStartRow be 2? When I attempt to run this I am getting some really strange values.

By: Matthew Pfluger

Matthew Pfluger — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:06:00 +0000

The hyperlinks is a neat idea. If you’re going to do that, I would not use a FIND function, though. That has the tendency to be very slow, especially for large datasets. I would instead give each row a unique integer ID value and then create a “ParentID” column to store the ID value of the row’s parent. Then, you can replace the FIND function with an index function like INDEX or OFFSET which will calculate much faster and scale quite nicely.

By: lhm

lhm — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:16:00 +0000

Being lazy, I do most ad hoc stuff from the immediate window and tweak it as needed.
This means just entering commands without setting up any code modules.

Suppose you've got a list of outline or indentation levels, as Matthew described.
For the posted example this would be 0,1,2,2,1,2,2,2,0 down a column.

To create the outline, you could select the range and enter from the VBE:

Cells.ClearOutline: ActiveSheet.Outline.SummaryRow = xlabove: _
For each c in selection:For i=1 to c:c.entirerow.group:Next i:Next c

If it needs to run faster you could try (with 8 = maximum outline level):

For i=1 to 8: selection.columndifferences(activecell).select: _
For each a in selection.areas:a.entirerow.group:Next a:Next i

Another useful thing is to link cells to parent rows. With the first column selected, try:

for each c in selection.columndifferences(activecell): c.formula= _
"=Hyperlink(""#A""&row(" & selection.find(c-1,c,xlvalues,,,xlprevious).entirerow.address & ")," & c & ")": next c

Now you can trace dependencies with ctrl+[ and ] or Ctrl+Shift+{ and }

By: Matthew Pfluger

Matthew Pfluger — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Update: I've had a lot of interest in this code, and I'm glad it's helping folks out. I would like to clarify that the code doesn't look at the WBS code to do the outlining; rather, it requires a numeric level value to group on. That is, "1? has a level of 0, but "1.2.1.4? has a level of 4. You can calculate the Level from a WBS that uses a period (.) as its delimiter by using the following Excel formula:

=LEN(B1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(B1,".",""))

By: Matthew Pfluger

Matthew Pfluger — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:49:00 +0000

Since I made that post last year, I've modified the code to make it faster and more robust. I've created an example workbook that contains all the outlining VBA code. I also included buttons and comments to help you debug the code and help learn how to use it and how it works. If anyone would like a copy, please email me at pflugs30{@] gmail (dot] com.

I use this code nearly 10 times a day to outline Bill of Materials data, and several of these workbooks contain thousands of rows. This outlining code is fast, robust, and well tested in both Excel 2003 and 2007. I hope it helps you, too. Have a great day!

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:57:00 +0000

Sergio: I switched to a better code rendering plugin for comments, but Matthew’s comments was before the switch. I just cleaned up the escape characters in his comment so you should be able to copy and paste it successfully now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:35:00 +0000

Hi Matthew,

Thank you very much for sharing your WBS outlining code (I'm sure this is especially appreciated by those of us who are relatively new to VBA)! I know this is an old thread and perhaps you wont know about comments made today, but I thought it worth a try.

I too had problems pasting this into a standard code module. It seems that there are extra characters in the paste above (i.e. ">" in the first Do Loop "Do Until (lStartRow >= lNumOfRows)" & "&" in the MsgBox calls). I don't see "gt" or "amp" as declared variables, so I am assuming these are simply pasting errors. And when I remove these characters in the editor, the code will compile. However, as documented in your developers comments, you moved function "ResetLastCell" to make it a separate function called by function RemoveOutlining (shown at the bottom of the pasted code above). Would you be so kind as to please provide the function "ResetLastCell" too. Of course, this would be greatly appreciated.

If my assumption about removing characters ">" & "amp" above was incorrect, it would be nice if you could post (or email me, if you prefer) an example workbook with this code working. Having a working WBS outline in Excel would make my work life a lot easier and would give me another useful VBA example to study and learn from.

Take care and best of everything,
Mike
jaden123451@hotmail.com

By: Sergio Handal

Sergio Handal — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Hi Matthew,

The code looks amazing and is just what I was searching for.
The only problem I have is when i paste it to my excel VBA editor it comes with a lot of "Pasting Problems" It shows syntax errors.

I would like to ask you pleas if you can send me an excel file with the code inside working already. My e-mail is: catuso.shz@gmail.com

I will appreciate a lot all your help.

Best regards,
Sergio.