Today is my kids’ (we have twins – boy & girl) 3rd birthday. As we celebrate the day, I want to take a moment away from all Excel stuff and share my experience being a dad. Grab a cup of coffee or whatever keeps you going, relax and read on.
The first shock
My first shock of being a dad arrived even before my kids were born. It was the first ultrasound scan Jo (my wife) went thru. The nurse announced,
I hear two heart-beats. Let me re-check
It would not be an understatement to say Jo and I skipped a few heart-beats hearing that! We never thought we would be blessed with twins. While we are doubly happy we also worried whether we can be good parents.
To top it, when they turned up we realized that we have one of each – Nakshatra (girl) and Nishanth entered our world on September 24th, 2009.
(Note: In India parents are not allowed to know the sex of baby before they were born, hence the surprise)
My 6 Daddy years…
A quick TODAY()-DATE(2009,9,24) tells you that it has been only 3 years since my kids were born. But I have amassed 6 daddy years, thanks to raising twins!
In these 6 years, there were a handful occasions when I felt like sending a classified ad to newspapers to this effect:
Take one or both. 2 lovely kids, well raised but naughty. Potty trained and can brush their teeth. Hurry up!
But better sense prevailed and we kept them 😀
To be honest, they are not all that mischievous. But sometimes they get on our nerves so bad.
A dinner to remember
After spending probably zillion nights eating at home, one day, my wife declared, “Honey, lets go out tonight.” We usually leave the kids with our in-laws (they live close by) when we do this. But that day we must have been possessed by cruel demons. Why else would I say, “Lets take the kids along!”
And all 4 of us got in to a car and went. We did a bit of shopping (getting new clothes for kids for their upcoming birthday) and reached the restaurant. Being weekend it was full. So I left Jo & kids at lobby and went inside to book a table.
Let me break this story at this point and give you one basic rule of parenting.
You need 100% attention of one adult per one children when they are in public places.
Coming back to the lobby, as I walked inside, suddenly Nishanth and Nakshatra felt liberated & started running like incredible hulk after breaking free from underground army prison. With in a span of 30 seconds, Nakshatra walked to a near-by mini pond and sat on the ledge. As Jo managed to lug Nishanth from the other corner to that pond, Nakshatra made a backward move with a swiftness rarely seen outside tom and jerry cartoons.
SPALSH!
She is drowned up side down and started crying aloud.
Thankfully, Jo quickly pulled her out. But now all her clothes are wet and she is shivering a lot.
Fortunately, we had new clothes in the car. So I took her to the car and changed. By the time I got back, Jo already got us seats and ordered something. So we started eating. And then, Nakshatra wanted to pee. So Jo took her to the rest-room. And then Nishanth started running behind them. So I followed him.
Meanwhile a clever waiter noticed an empty table with no food items. He promptly asked the next group to occupy it.
When all of us got back, we had 4 strangers looking hungrily at our order of chicken something, Indian breads & something else!
I will not bother you with how the rest of dinner, drive to dessert place and drive back home went. But rest assured that we had few more nasty surprises.
The car that wont start
My kids have taken a strange fancy to keys & key holes. Once every few weeks they invent a hare-brained scheme to spoil a lock, key or something. Once when visiting family friends, my son has managed to bend my car keys by 900. Fortunately they had a hammer and we could twist it back.
But we are not always so lucky. Recently, in one of their invented games, they poked small sticks in to the key hole my car. Later when I tried to open the door, it was jammed. I ended up calling the service center folks and they sent a technician who gave me the look, “Sucker! I am sure you will become a regular customer”.
This is not a one off thing. I had same experience with my bike key hole, car trunk key hole and our gate locks. And did I tell you my kids derive a lot of pleasure locking the doors when we are in bath?!?
But its not all that bad
If there is one thing I am doing more after my kids are born, it is laughing & smiling. We (Jo and I) laugh at least a dozen times everyday watching the kids. They make us immensely happy. It is a joy to watch them grow, take good care of each other and learn things. Their innocent smiles and immense curiosity put us at ease almost immediately even when we are tired, stressed or worried. And that is worth more than a jammed key hole or spoiled dinner.
I wish you many more years of happiness, health & wealth Nakshatra & Nishanth. Now go and have the cake.
Just don’t spoil your new clothes 😛
PS: If you have kids, Learn Excel. You will have more free time to chase those little lunatics.
28 Responses to “Pimp your comment boxes [because it is Friday]”
This borders on Excel soft-cell...er, soft-core...porn. My favorite kind.
Wow, that is pimp-TASTIC! I have a question, as a VBA n00b: additional comment boxes stay plain unless I "run" the macro. Is there a way to change all comments, going-forward?
hi Chandoo, well, I like the macro approach. For those who don't like it, there is another way: just add the "draw" toolbar to the shapes toolbar (via Custom etc), click on "edit comment", click on the auto-shape and then choose "draw" drop-down, --> modify auto-shape --> then you even can have a heart or a banner (I like the horizontal banner in in purple :-)) . in excel 2007, you have to add this custom menu that you choose via Excel Options --> Custom --> it is called "change/ modify auto-shape"!!!
best,
@Chandoo. Great Post 🙂
@Tim : the way the macro is coded, it must be run very time.
@Community: If someone has an idea to perform it when opening an existing excel, it should be nice.
@Community: if someone has some code to revamp the commentboxes on all sheets, please share it. 🙂
@Microsoft Excel-progammers: some pimpoptions for the commentboxes should be great.
Cheerio
Tom
For the auto run, please add the codes in workbook:
Private Sub Workbook_SheetActivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
Call Comments_Tom
End Sub
Wow, that was a lot of fun... Thanks Tom!
@Jeff... Now, 5000 people know about your favorite porn... 😛
@Tim ... you can write an event to handle the new comments. I wouldnt recommend it as it is really painful. another option is to use the macro suggested by Yukikomi. It will update comments everytime you activate the sheet.
@laguerriere: very cool 🙂
@Chandoo ... Thanks! This is good stuff. I combined your tip with a tip from Mark O'Brien, then assigned it to a button on Excel 2010's Quick Access Toolbar, to format comments AS I add them. I also like how Mark's code saves me the trouble of backspacing my name out of new comments:
Sub AppendToExistingComment()
'Source: Mark O'Brien at http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57296
Dim oRange As Range
Dim oComment As Comment
Dim sText As String
'Use object variable to hold range.
Set oRange = ActiveCell
'Use object variable for comment
Set oComment = oRange.Comment
'text to be added to the comment box
sText = InputBox("Type text to be added:", "APPEND TO COMMENT TEXT")
If Len(sText) = 0 Then End
'If Active Cell has a comment then append new text to the end of the comment text
If Not oComment Is Nothing Then
sText = oComment.Text & vbNewLine & sText
oRange.Comment.Delete
End If
'Add a comment with the contents of sText
oRange.AddComment sText
DoEvents
Comments_Tom
End Sub
Thank you very much for the code, it seems to be working for the most part; I am having a problem however. Once the routine makes the corrections to the comment, the comment becomes invisible. By invisible, I mean that when I highlight my mouse over it, nothing appears. However, when I right click the cell and click 'edit comment' then the comment becomes visible and I enter edit mode. Upon clicking out of the comment, it simply vanishes again. I've tried to fix this problem by adding a .shape.visible = msoTrue but then every comment is always visible. o_O please advise...
Thank you,
Nick
@Nick- That is because the font color of the comment is white and when you select the color of selection is also white hence you can not see anything. Try to change the color code in the routine to something else. would work
Thanks for that! The code works perfectly!
[...] look at Format Excel Comment Boxes using VBA Macros | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online [...]
@ Chandoo - code works great and the comments look super cool. But I have ran into a small issue. In the comments, I am inserting pictures. When I run the macro, for all comments which already have pictures; pictures are deleted. Pls help me retain the pics in comments.
[…] posted some code one of his readers submitted, it "pimps" your comment boxes from those boring black-text-on-yellow rectangles to something more professional and eye-pleasing. […]
love in it
Hi Tom,
This looks really excellent. I am however relatively new to macros / VBA codes so having copy pasted your code in the Developer mode of an Excel file, what are the next steps to use them? Can you please help? Just to recap, I opened a blank Excel workbook, clicked on Developer, copy pasted the comments code and saved the file to the desktop.
Now how do I go about using it to add comments to an existing file? My apologies for asking a question which may be basic to you great geniuses, but I am not there yet and aspire to get there.
Many thanks for helping me with next steps that I need to take so that I can now use the code.
Best Wishes
Deepak Dave, CMA, MBA, PMP
Senior Management Consultant
Dear Dave,
The best thing to do is to copy the macro in the personal.xls(x) file. The personal excel file will always be launched when you open excel so you can use it with every excelworkbook.
Read all about it on the page of Microsoft.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Copy-your-macros-to-a-Personal-Macro-Workbook-aa439b90-f836-4381-97f0-6e4c3f5ee566
Once you have the macro in the personal, you can 'call' the macro by the keyboardcombination 'alt+f8' and klik on the macroname.
Hope this clarifies the 'how to'. Good luck with your first steps in the wonderfull world of macro's.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Many thanks. I will try that out. Learning is fun and learning this stuff is even more amazing.
Best Wishes
Deepak Dave
There is a line 'Dim LArea As Long' which does not appear to be used. Have I missed something?
Dear Gary,
Correct the 'Dim LArea As Long' is indeed not relevant and can be deleted.
Tom
Excellent hack!
For some reason when I opened my file after using LibreOffice Calc, all comment boxes had changed to some arrow shape.
So this macro helped me from manually changing more than 5000 comments in a worksheet, or having to install some Excel extension.
I used it with the following attributes to get back old style comments:
It helped me from manually changing more than 5000 comments in a worksheet, or having to install some Excel extension.
.Shape.AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle
.Shape.TextFrame.Characters.Font.Name = "Calibri"
.Shape.TextFrame.Characters.Font.Size = 10
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoMargins = True
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoSize = True
Thanks a lot!
This was helpful, thank you
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But wanna remark on some general things, The site style is great,
the articles is really great : D. Good job, cheers
Is there code to add to this that will format a particular part of the comment (i.e. make the last sentence in the comment bold and in italics)?
This is fantastic!
How would I add auto-sizing to it?
I tried adding this:
.Shape.AutoSize = True but it gives me an error and as a novice at VBA I can't figure it out.
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoSize = True
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How should the code be changed in order to tun once for all worksheets in a workbook?