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Several Excel developers have written
free utilities and add-ins for Excel that will help make many task easier
and more convenient. This pages describes several of the most common
and widely used. These are the "must have" add-ins for
Excel power users.
Most are free.
Microsoft Excel Viewer
This program allows users who do not have Excel on
their computers to view Excel files. The viewer allows users to
see the contents of a workbook, but no change any values or perform any
calculations.
Download from
Microsoft.
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FindLink by Bill Manville
This add-in is the perfect tool to help you track down
links in your workbooks. It searches out links in formulas, defined
names, and controls.
Download
from Stephen Bullen's site.
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RemoveMenus by Jim Rech
This add-in allows you to remove menus created in
Excel version 5 or 95 from your workbooks. Once you've converted a
workbook to version 97 or 2000, you can't remove menus created in an earlier
version. This add-in allows you to do this.
Download
from Stephen Bullen's site.
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VBA CodeCleaner by Rob Bovey
As you do extensive editing to a VBA project, lots of
"garbage" gets left in the file because VBA doesn't properly clean
up after itself. Not only does this increase the file size, but it can
lead to very strange behavior at run time. CodeCleaner exports all
your VBA code to text files, removes the modules from your project, and then
imports the code from the text files. This forces VBA to clean
out all the garbage and start with a "clean" copy of the
code. I very strongly recommend this add-in. Download
from Rob Bovey's site. (Or download
the version for Excel5/95.)
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Dialog Converter by Rob Bovey
When Excel97 was introduced, it replaced the existing
Dialog Sheets with the far more powerful UserForm objects. However, it
didn't provide a way to convert existing dialog sheets to the new
UserForms. Rob's Dialog Converter automates this tedious and
cumbersome task. Dowload from
Rob Bovey's site.
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VBA Code Documenter by Rob Bovey
This add-in will document the "vital
statistics" of your VBA project. Dowload from
Rob Bovey's site.
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Excel Utility Kit by Rob Bovey
This is a collection of 25 routines that assist in
working with defined names, worksheet settings, and range selections.
Dowload from Rob
Bovey's site.
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FaceIDs For Command Buttons by John Walkenbach
When you create your own command buttons on toolbars,
you'll want to assign an image to the button. Unfortunately, unless
you know what image corresponds to what ID number, this isn't an easy
task. John's FaceID add-in displays each image, and its ID number,
that you can use on a command button (and there are a lot more than you may
think!). Download
from John Walkenbach's site.
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ASAP Utilities
Created by Bastien Mensink in the Netherlands,
this is a fantastic collection of over 300 utilities, all very well
organized into a menu structure added to the Excel menu bar. This is
truly one of the best and most useful add-ins I've ever used. Download
from www.asap-utilities.com
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MZTools by Carlos Quintero This is one of the best add-ins for the Visual Basic
Editor ever written. It provides hundreds of tools to make coding
easier. Available free from
www.mztools.com .
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Power Utility Pak (PUP) by John Walkenbach
This is the only "for a fee" utility I list here. I was inclined not to list
any non-free utilities, but PUP version 5 is so good and so useful, that I
couldn't resist. (And no, I don't get anything for referrals from here.)
This is a truly remarkable set of tools. PUP version 5 (works only in
Excel 2000 or later -- not 97) costs US$40, or US$60 with the full VBA
source code. See J-Walk &
Associates PUP page for more details and ordering information.
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Google Search Utility by Ron de Bruin
This free add-in makes is simple to search directly from
within Excel the Excel newsgroups via Google.com for answers to questions
stored in Google's vast archives of the usenet newsgroups.
Download directly from Ron's
web site.
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Name Manager by Jan Karel Pieterse
The basic interface in Excel for managing defined names
is, to put it charitably, lacking. Excel MVP Jan Karel Pieterse has
written a great add in for managing the defined names in a workbook.
Download
from
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Download.htm#namemanager .
Smart Indenter by Stephen Bullen
This add-in properly indents VBA code for a structured
and professional format. Download from
www.oaltd.co.uk/Indenter
VBE Tools by Stephen Bullen
A variety of extension tools for the VBA Editor. Download
from www.oaltd.co.uk/VBETools
VBA Code Compare A
very nice add-in that compares and manages changes in VBA Projects.
http://www.formulasoft.com/vba-code-compare.html |
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The bottom line:
For VBA, the
best utility is MZTools, by Carlos Quintero.
For Excel, the best utility is ASAP Utilities (free)
or Power Utility Pak (US$40).
Have you found other utilities that are "Must Have's"
for Excel users? Send me an email
and I'll add it to the list. The only requirement is that the add-in
or workbook be free.
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