Update: As of Sept 3rd, 2010, this code or approach no longer works. Twitter has taken themselves too seriously to disable a working protocol in lieu of complicated oAuth. I am keeping the post intact for amusement and knowledge of xmlhttp works.
Twitter is fun. You can stay in touch with your friends and followers, 140 characters at a time.
Out of curiosity I opened the twitter api documentation today to see if it is possible to build an excel based desktop client to post messages to twitter.
It turns out that, doing this using twitter api is relatively simple. So I went ahead and built an excel sheet using which you can post messages to your twitter account. Interested? Read on
Create a new MS Excel file and make a data entry form like this
You can insert the button using form controls. Go to menu > view > toolbars and select “forms”.
Now select the button control and draw it on your sheet.
Excel will show a dailog asking which macro to run when that button is pressed. Enter the name as “tweetThis” or something cool.
Make sure you adjust the text color of password field same as background. That way your colleague (say hello to her from PHD) cannot look over your shoulder and know your twitter password.
PS: if you are using Excel 2007, form controls will be available in “Developer” tab of ribbon. If you don’t see developer tab, you must turn it on from “excel options”. Press office button and select excel options. I guess the option will be in “Advanced” area.
Create named ranges for your data
(this step is not mandatory)
We need just 3 fields of data to post a message to your twitter account. User name, Password and Message . Select each of the 3 cells and create named ranges for them. Name them something meaningful like “tusername”, “tpasswd” and “tmessage”. To create a name for selected cell, just press menu > insert > name > define (press the create name button in excel 2007)
Now, the fun part, writing macro code to post your message to twitter
The actual code is no geek stuff. We will use XMLHTTP object to do our work.
What is xmlhttp? it is the same object your browser uses to dynamically receive and send data from websites. It is the stuff behind all those cool AJAX powered sites.
First, right click on the “tweet” button you have created and select assign macro option. In the window it would show your macroname (tweetThis). Select it and click on edit button. This will open VBA Editor. Don’t freak out. 🙂
Our code needs to do the following stuff:
- Create an xmlhttp object
- Use twitter API’s post method and post the message
- Get the status and display it in debug window (just so that we would know if something went wrong)
- Close the xmlhttp object
I have written the below code, but I am sure you can write your own looking at how simple it is.
Sub tweetThis() Dim xml, tUsername, tPassword, tStatus, tResult Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP") 'get the username entered by you in named range tusername tUsername = Range("tusername") 'get the password entered by you innamed rangetpasswd tPassword = Range("tpasswd") 'get the message entered by you innamed range tmessage tStatus = Range("tmessage")xml.Open "POST", "http://" & tUsername & ":" & tPassword & "@twitter.com/statuses/update.xml?status=" & tStatus, False xml.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "content=text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" xml.Send tResult = xml.responsetext 'you can view Twitter’s response in debug window Debug.Print tResult Set xml = Nothing End Sub
Finally, enter your user name and password and a test message and test your code
If everything is fine, you should be able to tweet from that spreadsheet. Here is a sample message if you don’t know what to tweet:
Wow, http://chandoo.org/wp just posted a cool new way to make your own twitter client
You can easily extend this code to check someones status message, DM or message someone or analyze twitter stream. For processing twitter data you can use DOM parser objects from VBA.
Download Twitter from Excel Application and Play around with the code
Go ahead and download the twitter from excel app and learn by opening the code etc.
That is all. Do you like this ?
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13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?