Hi everyone. This is my 1st post here. I have done all kinds of
searching for my questions and haven't found an answer. I finally
found this sight. Didn't find my answers (yes I did seach) but at
least I found somewhere to ask them. So here goes...


Ok, this is what I want to do. I made a workbook to act as my new Avon
business ledger, expense and gift record. I want to make a front end
for my workbook which has 14 worksheets (1 year-end totals, 1 graphs,
12 months). I want the user (me and a couple friends) to enter the
year, choose the month, date and what type of data to enter from a drop
down menus. Since I have 4 different pages per worksheet for each
month for different things they would need to choose what data they
want to enter from a drop down menu (ledger, expenses, detailed expense
record, gift records.) Then they hit a go button (or if it could go to
the data entry page automatically that would be great) and they get a
form page to enter the relevent data. When the user has entered in all
the data, the user hits a save button. Then data will plug itself into
the worksheets. When the user is done entering data I want them to be
able to choose a way they can view their data. Simple view (which
would be the Yearly Totals worksheet) or detailed monthly view (which
would be the Monthly worksheets.) And also be able to choose which
worksheets/pages they can print.

Other things I would like to be able to do. If they choose a date that
already has data, the data will show up in the data entry boxes for easy
editing. Choose to see/print graphs. There was a couple more thing I
wanted to do but I can't think of them at the moment.

I don't have much programming experience. BASIC and Fortran in high
school.
Some HTML to build my website, www.shannonedds.com. Done
some batch coding when it was popular, lol. and that's about it.

Questions:
1. Is this possible in VBA?. I think it is, If so can you guys tell
me about any good sites that have Excel/VBA programming tutorials and
info? I would rather not buy a book just for this 1 task.

2. If I do have to buy a book, what is a good one? Has to be easy to
read for VBA beginners and inexpensive. Also, I own Office XP if that
make a difference. I was thinking about a Excel with VBA for Dummies
book. What do you think?

3. Can this be compiled so Excel isn't needed on the computer to run?
A couple of my fellow Avon friends don't have Excel but would like to
have something like I made but easy to use. Their computer skills are
lacking. Compiling it into a EXE file would be great.

Thanks and I hope to hear from some of you smart guys!
Shannon :)


--
ShannonE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"ShannonE" wrote in
message ...

Hi everyone. This is my 1st post here. I have done all kinds of
searching for my questions and haven't found an answer. I finally
found this sight. Didn't find my answers (yes I did seach) but at
least I found somewhere to ask them. So here goes...


Ok, this is what I want to do. I made a workbook to act as my new Avon
business ledger, expense and gift record. I want to make a front end
for my workbook which has 14 worksheets (1 year-end totals, 1 graphs,
12 months). I want the user (me and a couple friends) to enter the
year, choose the month, date and what type of data to enter from a drop
down menus. Since I have 4 different pages per worksheet for each
month for different things they would need to choose what data they
want to enter from a drop down menu (ledger, expenses, detailed expense
record, gift records.) Then they hit a go button (or if it could go to
the data entry page automatically that would be great) and they get a
form page to enter the relevent data. When the user has entered in all
the data, the user hits a save button. Then data will plug itself into
the worksheets. When the user is done entering data I want them to be
able to choose a way they can view their data. Simple view (which
would be the Yearly Totals worksheet) or detailed monthly view (which
would be the Monthly worksheets.) And also be able to choose which
worksheets/pages they can print.

Other things I would like to be able to do. If they choose a date that
already has data, the data will show up in the data entry boxes for easy
editing. Choose to see/print graphs. There was a couple more thing I
wanted to do but I can't think of them at the moment.

I don't have much programming experience. BASIC and Fortran in high
school.
Some HTML to build my website, www.shannonedds.com. Done
some batch coding when it was popular, lol. and that's about it.

Questions:
1. Is this possible in VBA?. I think it is, If so can you guys tell
me about any good sites that have Excel/VBA programming tutorials and
info? I would rather not buy a book just for this 1 task.

Most definitely it can, but it also seems to me that most of what you want
can be done with worksheet functionality, no VBA required. But it is not the
most basic requiremnt, because you have a full vision of what you want
(which is good), and there are many facets to that. Personally, I think
design is the most important part of building a good application,
spreadsheet or anything else, so you may want to think more about that. For
instance, why have dropdowns to decide which type of data? Why not have
separate columns for each, and use Excel to do the work. And why do you need
an input sheet? Why not add the data directly to the correct month, and
formulae to summarise and graph

2. If I do have to buy a book, what is a good one? Has to be easy to
read for VBA beginners and inexpensive. Also, I own Office XP if that
make a difference. I was thinking about a Excel with VBA for Dummies
book. What do you think?

It's a good book, but as I said, I don't see that much VBA in what you want
to do. A better option to me would be for you to come up with a design,
float that in these NGs, and then start to build it step by step, again
asking in here when you get stuck.

3. Can this be compiled so Excel isn't needed on the computer to run?
A couple of my fellow Avon friends don't have Excel but would like to
have something like I made but easy to use. Their computer skills are
lacking. Compiling it into a EXE file would be great.

To do this would be a lot more work, and would need some development tool
such as VB. I would stick to Excel if I were you, sounds ideal for your
solution, and you can download a free Excel viewer for your friends to view
the data (but not change it in any way). It is available at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...D=c8378bf4-996...

Another option is OpenOffice or StarOffice, which are free spreadsheets, but
I have no personal knowledge of these so cannot give an opinion.