How many hours did Johnny work? [Excel Homework]

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Story of Johnny, Hard working atom splitter:

Meet Johnny, who lives by the intersection of lane 2345, and BAG street. Johnny (or little Jon as friends call him) is a hard working family guy. He works at local nuclear power plant in a neighborhood named Sheet3. Due to a recent re-organization at work place, Jon found himself reporting to an almost crazy boss named “Bill Lumbergh”.

Lumbergh asking Johnny to split atoms manully before its too late.. or else...,Now, Lumbergh is not your everyday crazy boss, he is so much more than that. So, one day Lumbergh walks over to Jon’s desk and tells him, “Look Jon, we are having issues in the particle accelerator in the basement. It doesn’t seem to split atoms alright. So I need you to go there and split atoms manually. We got 12,789,000 atoms to be split before next weekend. So I am gonna go ahead and ask you to work on it. Ummkay?

Just when Johnny thought of uttering a curse, Lumbergh came back and reminded, “Oh Johnny, remember to log how much time you are spending splitting atoms. I need you to tell me how many hours you worked for every million atoms. Make sure you follow the latest Timesheet report formats, or else…,

Johnny muttered a couple of real ugly cuss words that are not blog worthy and went about his business of splitting atoms. He managed split only 11 million of them before the deadline given by Lumbergh. Those darned atoms!

Also, Johnny logged the time he spent for every million atoms using, well, excel. Like this:

Data - Start and End times for each task - Calculating working hours between 2 given dates

(Download the data)

Your homework:

Johnny needs your help to figure out how many hours he worked in total (as well as for each million). He is already tired hunting a missing electron in the basement alleys. So don’t tell him to count manually. He wants to have an excel formula that tells him how many hours he worked given a start and end date in cells A1 and A2 respectively. Remember,

  • Johnny never works after 6pm or before 9am
  • Johnny never works on weekends.
  • Lets say Johnny doesnt take any lunch breaks (he has developed a taste for those higgs bosons sandwich with positron milk shake).

So I am gonna go ahead and ask you to complete this homework before the weekend. When you got the correct formula, come back here and post it in comments. Ummkay?

More excel homework:

PS: If you feel lost, that is because you have not seen office space. Go watch it.
PPS: if you still feel lost, that is because you do not know NETWORKDAYS. Go learn it.

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14 Responses to “How to Add your Macros to QAT or Excel toolbars?”

  1. Ashfire says:

    We have only just got excel 2007 so this is helping me navigate my way through the differences cheers.

    For Macro's i always add a Command Button, rename it something obvious, change the colour of it and finally add the following to its View Code section.

    Application.Run "MAcro1"

    This way anyone opening the file knows what to do if i ever win the lottery and dont make it in 🙂

  2. Ron Murphy says:

    Hi,
    Good article. But I have this problem.
    1) Customized QAT with a macro. Macro name = MacroX
    2) Runs OK from original location (e.g. C:\TestLoaction1\TestFile.xls)
    3) Copy past file to new location (e.g. C:\TestLoaction2\TestFile.xls)
    Menu button now fails:
    Cannot run the macro "C:\TestLoaction1\TestFile.xls'!MacroX' The macro may not be available in this workbook...

    Of course the code is there, and macros are enabled.

    Could get it to work after deleting and recreating macro custom buttons. So have to re-assign macro to QAT button every time I move the file?

    If I put a form button on he worksheet and assign the macro to that, it's location independent.

    Any ideas?
    Thanks

  3. Hui... says:

    @Ron
    What you have said is correct
    Macros within a worksheet are stored within the worksheet and hence follow it.
    Macros referenced by a button in the QAT or elsewhere are locaed in a file and if that file is moved the linkages don't follow.

    The easiest way around this is to store all your macros in a location that doesn't move and is in fact reloaded everytime that Excel starts and that is called the Personal.xlsx/b file.

    These are refered to several time at Chandoo.org or have a read of
    http://www.rondebruin.nl/personal.htm
    or
    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/deploy-your-excel-macros-from-a-central-file-HA001087296.aspx

    • Col Delane says:

      In Excel 2003 and prior versions, a button added to the Toolbar maintained a DYNAMIC link to the file (e.g. Personal.xlsb) holding the assigned macro, such that if the file was relocated for any reason (by using Excel's native Save As command rather than just moving it via Windows Explorer), the link between the button and the file was updated.
      I expected the same to occur with Excel 2007+, but alas, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have removed another feature useful to advanced users (just as they did by removing the ability to design your own buttons)!!
      So having just done some reorganisation of my files, I now have to remove and recreate every friggin macro button on my QAT (I have lots) - what a pain in the proverbial!!

  4. Ron Murphy says:

    Hi Hui,

    Thanks for the help, that's really useful.

    1) The macros I'm adding are for one specific Excel application, so I really wanted the macros to follow the file

    2) I didn't want to have to pass other files around too and have users installing those - either Personal.xlsx/b or as an Add-In.

    3) I realise now that the QAT additions will appear for other Excel workbooks in which I don't want the macros available.

    So, it looks like I need to keep it local, by using a button on the worksheet. Unless you can suggest any way of adding to menus just for a specific workbook.

    Thanks again for your help. Great site, so I'll be signing up for the emails.

    Ron

  5. cheryl says:

    I know I'm a little late jumping on this post, but wondering if anyone knows how to add a UDF to the QAT? I've saved my UDF in my personal workbook, but it does not show up in my list when I choose Macros when customizing my QAT. Suggestions? Thanks!!

    • Chandoo says:

      @Cheryl: UDFs cannot be accessed like Macros. You can use them from other macros or from worksheet cells as formulas...
      @David: If you save your macros file and then install it as an add-in then it will be always available for you.

  6. David says:

    The instructions work great when you are creating a new file, and it is still open. I find that I can't access macros after I've saved a file as an xlam and closed it. When I reopen the xlam, either by browsing to it, or by having it set to open as an addin using Excel Options, the macros are no longer available in the macros list when I go to edit the QAT. Any way around that?

  7. JimH says:

    I need to create a button that will run a macro. Once you click the button it needs to open up a browser asking you to select a report/file. Once you select the file, it will run the macro on the selected file and then save it as a new report with a name and the current date. I created the macro to sort/modify the report but I do not know how to do what I mentioned above. I hope this makes sense.

  8. NathanG says:

    I'm having trouble adding a macro to the QAT. I've done everything up to step 5 but my macro isn't showing up. What am I doing wrong?

  9. surfinette says:

    Hi,
    Thank you for the explanation. Very useful for a recent switcher from office 2003 to office 2010.
    My follow-up question is: in Excel (or ppt) 2010, can you customize the macro button that you put in the QAT?
    In office 2003, once you chose the custom button for your Macro, you could then edit pixel by pixel the said button.
    For instance, I've created 2 Macros in PPT that are converting all my slides to either English or French language, so I'd like one button to show EN and the other FR... that would be more meaningful that any of the possible "custom" office 2010 buttons

  10. Morton Wakeland says:

    I read all the post and one important aspect to the QAT was never mentioned. That is, you have a macro driven worksheet that you want to share with other. You have customized the QAT with two icons to run the macros (VBA programs in reality). However, when the others receive the workbook, the icons are no where to be found. It's my understanding those "customized buttons" have been saved to an outside file, Excel.qat. QUESTION: Could one simply attach that file to your email, along with the worksheet, and tell the recipients to copy that file to correct location on their computer - C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office|\
    Would the customize macro buttons then appear in the worksheet and, more importantly, work? Thanks for your thoughtfulness and thanks for well written instructions Chandoo!
    MortW

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