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Date: 20 June 2009
Author: Howard Kaikow <kaikow@standards.com>
Subject: Howard Kaikow's Excel Fix Time Workbook
Download the latest version of the program to create and use Howard Kaikow's Excel Fix Time Workbook
On 11 May 2009, I switched from using the local telephone company to a cable company for voice telephone. They allow downloading a history of dialed, received and missed calls. It is likely that other cable/VOIP/etc. companies also offer this information for download.
I expected to be able to open a Microsoft Excel workbook, and copy the data into the workbook, then perform simple operations, such as using Excel's SUM function to find out how much time I had spent on the phone, and for particular numbers.
It was disappointing to find that the SUM function produced a value of 0, unless I manually massaged the imported data..
Of course, since I would be downloading more data at least 1-2 times per month, the manual fixing of things would get rather tedious. So being a programmer, I have written an Excel macro to do the deed.
I have decided to allow others to use the macro, with the hope that companies will change the way they export the data, perhaps, eliminating the need for the macro or manual massaging of the data.
Download the latest version of the program to create and use Howard Kaikow's Excel Fix Time Workbook
Run the HowardKaikowExcelFixTime.exe program. The program will:
The DLL and EXE were compiled using Microsoft Visual Basic 6 (with SP 6) and Microsoft Office 2003. The program should work with Microsoft Excel 2003 and 2007. I have intentionally not compiled the program to use Excel 97, Excel 2000 and Excel 2002, as I could not justify the time to do so and to test such options.
To use the DLL and CreateWorkbookFixTime.exe, please note the following requirements:
Either Microsoft Visual Basic 6 or the Microsoft Visual Basic 6 run-time files: If you have neither, then you can download the Visual Basic 6 run-time files by following the instructions in VBRun60.exe Installs Visual Basic 6.0 Run-Time Files.
The program will not run on an OS earlier than Microsoft Windows 2000, so you should already have the Visual Basic 6 run-time files installed.
I believe that both Microsoft Office 2003, and 2007 already have the Visual Basic 6 run-time files installed.
The workbook is created with the code necessary to run the macro and a reference to the DLL. In addition, there is code that automatically creates the toolbar each time you open the workbook and deletes the toolbar each time you close the workbook.
The macro is used by selecting the troublesome cells in the workbook, then clicking on the Fix Time button on the toolbar. In Excel 2003, the toolbar should default to being visible, if not make the toolbar visible. In Excel 2007, one has to click on the Addins menu to display the toolbar.
To give you an idea of how to actually use the workbook, the following is a description of what I have done since 11 May 2009:
I fiddled around, and was able to get the data into a form that would work with the SUM function. Obviously, this would be too tedious to go through when I added more data, at least once per month.
Once the current values have been corrected, each time one adds data, it is only necessary to apply the two bolded steps above.