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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Check out other cool excel and spreadsheet stuff
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Build an expense tracker using google docs
Make your own Amazon Deal Tracker in Excel
Findout when that iPod is available for cheap. Learn xpath and track almost everything
22 Responses to “Master Excel 2007 Ribbon with this Free Learning Guide”
Thank you, kind sir. Well done with the baby making.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001@hotmail.com. never a response.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001_at_hotmail_dot_com. never a response for either attempt.
@Doug, it shows that your email address is pending verification. Can you check your inbox (and may be spam folder too) for an email from me? The subject will be "Activate Subscription to Get your Free Excel Tips E-book"
[...] PPS: If you are struggling with ribbon, you should check out ribbon learning guide. [...]
Very Useful Info..Keep it up..
@Ajay.. you are welcome 🙂
how do u download microsoft excel for free?
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
Select Office
Free Trial
[...] Excel 2010 UI looks considerably better and less stressful than 2007. The colors are dull and subtle. The icons don’t call for attention unless you want to do something. The menus / ribbons feel smoother and slicker. [Learn to use Excel Ribbon with this Free e-Book] [...]
I can't open this pdf. I get the error message:
You do not have the required license to open this file.
Please request a license from the creator of the file, and add it using the license manager and they try opening it again.
What gives??
I downloaded the file again and it worked this time. Strange. (First file was 116 KB, second was 1644 KB... ???)
[...] More ribbon goodness | Free e-book to learn Excel Ribbon [...]
Hi Chandoo,
thanks for sharing your Excel 2007 learning experience with us; unfortunately the link to the pdf of the free Excel 2007 learning guide seems broken: my Acrobate Readers flags: "Unkown file type or corrupte data".
Have a nice day
Michael
well done this is great
Can somebody just provide a link the classic TAB exportedUI files for MS Office 2003 for us to use in office 2007/2010?. searching online, everybody just wnats to make a buck online with silly Classic Tab installers which do nothing more than inport exportedUI files for you.
Don't give me a ribbon how to guide, just give me free exportedUI files. I should not have to pay anyone for this, it is free XML, MS should have included this to begin with.
thanks
Dear.
There are a set of debit values and a set ot credit values in a column. I want a vba code by whcich the debit value plus a single / multiple credit value is zero that needs to be marked .
finally i will come to know out of the avaibale debits which cannot be used the with avilable credits either single or multiple values.
If multiple matching sets are available let it take the 1st or the 2nd one its not an issue.
Column A Ref
-1000 A
-5000 B
-8000 C
800 A
100 A
100 A
2000 B
3000 B
13000
15000
hi...
how to make this add-ins and display in ribbon... check this sample : http://www.cprsoft.com/GCDemo01.htm
thank you sir...
Please tell me format painter short cut key In excel ?
Thanks In Advance
thankfully.likeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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