In Excel 2002 (Windows XP Pro OS), is there a way to have the Import External
Data path default to the last folder visited (the way it did in Excel 97),
rather than going to "My Data Sources" each time? All my text data files are
organized deep under several layers of folders withing my general "Data"
folder, and as it stands now, I need to navigate through the same set of
multiple folders every time I want to import four or five seperate data files
which all reside in the same folder.

I don't see a way to change Excel's behavior. You could navigate to your
root data fold one more time and then pick Add To My Places under the Tools
drop down in the Select Data Source dialog (or just the File, Open dialog).
Then you'll at least be only 1 click away from the place you really want to
be.

You can make the "My Places" panel use small icons if it's too cluttered.
Just right-click on it and make the small icons choice from the bottom of
the popup.

--
Jim
"Barry Treadway" wrote in message
...
| In Excel 2002 (Windows XP Pro OS), is there a way to have the Import
External
| Data path default to the last folder visited (the way it did in Excel 97),
| rather than going to "My Data Sources" each time? All my text data files
are
| organized deep under several layers of folders withing my general "Data"
| folder, and as it stands now, I need to navigate through the same set of
| multiple folders every time I want to import four or five seperate data
files
| which all reside in the same folder.

The problem is, my data's all stored in the "Data" folder (it's all
engineering test data). In that folder are five folders, one for each type
of test being run. In each of these folders are 3-5 folders, one for each
instrument/test station. In each of these folders are 2-3 folders, one for
each operator. In each of these folders are a series of folders labeled by
the date of the test. In each of these are a few folders describing what was
tested that day. Sometimes there's an A and B folder in these for repeated
tests. The actual data folders are there. So even if the "Import Data" key
defaults to the "Data" folder, I still have five layers to navigate through
to get to each file, and there are up to 10 individual files per test. So
where the old system, which defaulted to the last place visited, was
effortless, I get so many errors now when technicians navigate to the wrong
file once or twice in the 50 times they have to navigate to the data files
that I'm thinking of going back to '97 and asking for my money back for 2002.

"Jim Rech" wrote:

I don't see a way to change Excel's behavior. You could navigate to your
root data fold one more time and then pick Add To My Places under the Tools
drop down in the Select Data Source dialog (or just the File, Open dialog).
Then you'll at least be only 1 click away from the place you really want to
be.

You can make the "My Places" panel use small icons if it's too cluttered.
Just right-click on it and make the small icons choice from the bottom of
the popup.

--
Jim
"Barry Treadway" wrote in message
...
| In Excel 2002 (Windows XP Pro OS), is there a way to have the Import
External
| Data path default to the last folder visited (the way it did in Excel 97),
| rather than going to "My Data Sources" each time? All my text data files
are
| organized deep under several layers of folders withing my general "Data"
| folder, and as it stands now, I need to navigate through the same set of
| multiple folders every time I want to import four or five seperate data
files
| which all reside in the same folder.

I don't know if this will help you, but I found that if I ran this macro
twice, the second time defaulted to the folder picked in the first run.

Sub GetImportTextFile()
Application.Dialogs(xlDialogImportTextFile).Show
End Sub


--
Jim
"Barry Treadway" wrote in message
...
| The problem is, my data's all stored in the "Data" folder (it's all
| engineering test data). In that folder are five folders, one for each
type
| of test being run. In each of these folders are 3-5 folders, one for each
| instrument/test station. In each of these folders are 2-3 folders, one for
| each operator. In each of these folders are a series of folders labeled
by
| the date of the test. In each of these are a few folders describing what
was
| tested that day. Sometimes there's an A and B folder in these for
repeated
| tests. The actual data folders are there. So even if the "Import Data"
key
| defaults to the "Data" folder, I still have five layers to navigate
through
| to get to each file, and there are up to 10 individual files per test. So
| where the old system, which defaulted to the last place visited, was
| effortless, I get so many errors now when technicians navigate to the
wrong
| file once or twice in the 50 times they have to navigate to the data
files
| that I'm thinking of going back to '97 and asking for my money back for
2002.
|