It is amazing how many people use Excel for providing status updates, reference material, defect tracking, etc. I have made a number of solutions for Excel users that thought that Excel was just a bunch of cells that could do a few calcs for convenience (SUM, IF, Vlookup,etc.) I think the hardest thing about Excel is getting the users to understand that excel can do things better. For example: a users mantains a list of somekind with each record containing several attributes. Typically a user gets a request for an update, so the user does a manual lookup, finds the properties to be changes and does the changes when found. Pretty simple, but when you amplify this type of work * 20 every day, you can definitely see that there has to be a quicker way. Enter VBA!

Share your custom Excel solution stories. What was the problem, how did you resolve it?

Regards,
-Scott