EGAD!!!!......methinks you are inside my head!!!.........when you write it
all out like that it seems to be exactly what I am thinking but do not know
how to express........you are AMAZING!!!

You have given me much more than I can think about at one time, but it
appears to be written plain enough so that my little mind can eventually
grasp all of it, and I do appreciate the time and effort you've taken to do
this. This is an exciting project to me, and you've given me a solid
direction to go in, and the confidence that it can be
accomplished.......more than I had hoped for.

Your insight, patience, and of course, Technical Expertise is most sincerely
appreciated.

Thanks once again,
Vaya con Dios,
Chuck, CABGx3


"Chrissy" wrote in message
...
The way I would do this is to have a master excel workbook that
lists all the files you have in your system. It would have the
directory in which they are stored and the file name in two
different cells in one row. Each row would be used for one of
the files. You could also have one column for each change you
make and another one for the category of file - maybe Excel or
AutoCAD - you could add columns for any other categories of
information you want to add.

You could even have one column for each item you put on the
embedded Excel sheet in each AutoCAD document.

Each time you wanted to run your code you would make a new
procedure that would do the work. This would have to be done
each time you needed to do something to all the files as you cannot
write all the procedures now because you do not know what work
you want to do in two years time.

I would keep a list of these procedures on another worksheet in
this document and have the parameters needed for that procedure
in columns beside the procedure name. This would be a named range
and that range would be used within the code to display a list box of
all the procedures I have used. When I ran the code it would display
this list box and I would select which procedure I wanted to run this
time. The next thing it would do would be to display another screen
which used the other info on the line for that procedure and showed
all the parameters that the procedure needs and what values I used
for that parameter last time I used that procedure. There would be
a place to change these values and a "run" button.

The program would then go down the list of files and open each one
and perform the listed procedure on it. If the file was open already
then it could either add that file name to another list of "not done"
files to do later or it could make the changes to the file anyway - if
it is opened and locked by someone else then it cannot change it but
if it is opened by you then you can always just link to that opened
file and change it.

The program would, once each file is changed and saved and closed,
record a "Y" in the column for this change - that column would be on
the file list worksheet and would be headed with a "name" and a date/time
stamp of the time that the macro was run. Better still, it would have a
"name" on the column and the value in the cell on the row for each file
would be the date/time stamp using NOW(). The "name" for the column
heading would come from the parameters form that the user fills in with
parameter values after selecting the procedure. This would be an
explanation
of what the change was for.

The program would decide if you want to run the selected procedure for all
files or only specific files based on your selected criteria. One of
these criteria
would be that the file was(was not) changed with a specific run. This way
you
can no reprocess all the files that you added something to and made a
mistake
and you can add something to all the missed files from the last run.

To get the list of file I would have a procedure that searched the
computer
system for any files with XLS or what ever the extension of the AutoCAD
files is. It would store these in the worksheet for me and I would then
go
through this list adding a comment to the "comment" column and marking
any file that I did not want in the system. I would then sort this list
on that
column and delete all the ones marked for deletion - or better still, I
would
leave the in the list and just not process them because they had an "X" in
the
"Include this file" column. That way I could rescan the computer system
every once in a while and pick up any new files and make sure that they
were
added to the system - of course, if this system is not going to have
anything
added to it then that would not be necessary - but "never" is a rather
permanent
thing and better to cover all bases.

Anyway - that is how I would write this system and it should only take a
few hours
to write and test with that outline ;-) It is important to get your plan
sorted out
before you code - it makes for a more robust system - I know this is very
hard if
you do not know the programming language well or are not a programmer but
it
does sort the women from the girls ;-) The process you appear to be using
is
one of working out one thing you need to do and get that working then
working out
the next thing. The problem is that the second thing may not be possible
so you
have to redo the first thing.

To check if what I have here is correct (after all, systems analysis
usually requires
more info that one gets in a couple of news group posts) I suggest that
you actually
write down all the steps you do if you make the changes to these files
manually. I
suggest that these steps are

- open file
- change file
- save file
- close file

The problem with news groups like this are that the question poster asks a
question
based on what he/she thinks they need to know to get something done. They
usually
do not know EVERYTHING that is possible and are just asking for
clarification on
one small point. They usually have little idea of what all the issues are
and only ask
what they think they have identified as the problem. The people who
answer questions
tend to answer specific questions and not suggest other ways to do things.
This is
totally understandable and these people are not mind readers. If someone
asks
"how do I add an auto run once macro to code" then maybe that is what they
want
to do - maybe it is what they think they need to do to get the results
they need.
For this reason, it can pay to say what you are trying to achieve then
suggest how you
think you can achieve it. You may get answers that save you hours and
hours in the
end. With some posts it is very easy to see where the question asked is
not the
right way to do things but most of the time it is not apparent what the
person is trying
to do in the whole worksheet - only the little bit they asked about).
Good luck.

Chrissy.



CLR wrote
Thanks Chrissy........that makes sense to me, I think you have a pretty
good
grasp of what I am wanting to do, even beyond my poor explanation. I am
the
curator of about 1100 AutoCAD drawings and numerous Excel files, and I
want
to be able to make Global changes to these files at will. One thing for
example, I have an Excel sheet inserted into each AutoCAD drawing that
assigns a lot number to each Batch-print job ordered from my Batch-print
Excel utility. This number is thereby printed out on each drawing as
it's
plotted. That works fine, but I would like to be able to change the
path
and filename reference to this inserted Excel sheet in all of the
Autocad
files, or as you suggest, select ones, by running this
"Master-macro".......and other changes like that

I thought the insertion of Autorun-ONCE macros would be the more
efficient
way to accomplish things because each file would not have to be open so
long..........and, the insertion need not be functional until the file
is
next opened..........."but" it would be disasterous if I "thought" the
file
had been fixed and in fact it wasn't, so I guess maybe your way would be
better after all.

Another question, can this master macro open all these files and yet
when it
encounters one that is already open it will NOT stop, but will continue
on
opening the ones it can and then report back a list of the ones it could
not
open......(I could have a code number inserted in each file that could
be
read when it's open).......

Thanks for your time and information........ I know it will surely be a
project, and I'm just trying to see if you learned ones think it's a
sort of
doable thing before I get too deep into it.......and from what you've
told
me so far, it looks like it will all work out........thanks again

Vaya con Dios,
Chuck, CABGx3