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Using Excel to load & interrogate another Excel file

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Guest0527211403

Mechanical
Apr 24, 2004
1,125
Hello,

I am trying to develop a better system for our sales engineers to generate quotes for customers.

At the moment, we have an Request for Quote (RFQ) Excel file which we provide to customers. In the excel file, the customer is able to select their desired configuration from a series of drop-down menus, which reference lists in the another worksheet. After they have selected what they want, we have a button with VBScripting that sends the file as an attachment (Sendmail function). So far that is working well for us, but a large proportion of our salespeoples' time is spent looking up values from our price lists to generate quotes.

What I am investigating is the possibility of generating another excel file which "processes" the information from incoming RFQ Excel files.

What I am envisioning for this file is a function that prompts me for the file name, and then returns data from a specific range of cells into the "processing" spreadsheet. The imported data is then used in a table lookup function, and the according cells of data are updated.

After that happens, I would like to generate the customers' quote from a template.

I am comfortable with table lookups, and the other workings within the same excel file. Its just having one excel file talk to another excel file that is giving me the trouble.

I believe that this can be done, but I am not sure how to make excel ask me for a file, and them extract data from specific cells within this file. Likewise, I do not know how to write data from specific cells into another file.

Does anyone know how to do this? Or possibly can someone point me to a tutorial online that may point me in the right direction?


As of now it is 4 PM on friday, so have a great weekend.

[cheers]

-Mark
 
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Mark:

We might just exist in parallel universes.

I am currently working on an almost identical situation (RFQ entry by Sales, with email hyperlink delivery to Estimating, lookups to other workbooks, etc). As a Test and Automation Engineer who works primarily in LabView, my company somehow figured I was the one to take this on. But so far I have kicked butt and given them shock and awe.

I have some VBA macros written, will post some tips on Monday if no one beats me to it.

For your reference, here are some good sites that have assited me with VBA (just started learning it!)


Now, time for the weekend

-Pete
 
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