Get Stock Quotes using Excel Macros [and a Crash Course in VBA]

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

This is a guest post by Daniel Ferry of Excelhero.com.

Excel Stock Quotes - using VBA Macors to fetch live stock quotes from Yahoo Finance to ExcelHave you ever wanted to fetch live stock quotes from excel? In this post we will learn about how to get stock quotes for specified symbols using macros.

One method that has worked well for my clients can be implemented with just a few lines of VBA code. I call it the ActiveRange.

An ActiveRange is an area on a worksheet that you define by simply entering the range address in a configuration sheet. Once enabled, that range becomes live in the sense that if you add or change a stock symbol in the first column of the range, the range will automatically (and almost instantly) update. You can specify any of 84 information attributes to include as columns in the ActiveRange. This includes things such as Last Trade Price, EBITDA, Ask, Bid, P/E Ratio, etc. Whenever you add or change one of these attributes in the first row of the ActiveRange, the range will automatically update as well.

Sound interesting, useful?

In this post, you can learn how to use excel macros to fetch live stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance website. It is also going to be a crash course in VBA for the express purpose of learning how the ActiveRange method works so that you can use it yourself.

Download Excel Stock Quotes Macro:

Click here to download the excel stock quotes macro workbook. It will be much easier to follow this tutorial if you refer to the workbook.

Background – Understanding The Stock Quotes Problem:

The stock information for the ActiveRange will come from Yahoo Finance. A number of years ago, Yahoo created a useful interface to their stock data that allows anyone at anytime to enter a URL into a web browser and receive a CSV file containing current data on the stocks specified in the URL. That’s neat and simple.

But it gets a little more complicated when you get down to specifying which attributes you want to retrieve [information here]. Remember there are 84 discreet attributes available. Under the Yahoo system, each attribute has a short string Tag Code. All we need to do is to concatenate the string codes for each attribute we want and add the resulting string to the URL. We then need to figure out what to do with the CSV file that comes back.

Our VBA will take care of that and manage the ActiveRange. Excel includes the QueryTable as one of its core objects, and it is fully addressable from VBA. We will utilize it to retrieve the data we want and to write those data to the ActiveRange.

Before we start the coding we need to include two support sheets for the ActiveRange. The first is called “YF_Attribs”, and as the name implies is a list of the 84 attributes available on Yahoo Finance along with their Yahoo Finance Tag Codes. The second sheet is called, “arConfig_xxxx” where xxxx is the name of our sheet where the ActiveRange will reside. It contains some configurable information about the ActiveRange which our VBA will use.

All of the VBA code for this project will reside inside of the worksheet module for the sheet where we want our ActiveRange to be. For this tutorial, I called the sheet, “DEMO”.

Writing the Macros to Fetch Stock Quotes:

Adding VBA Code to Worksheets - Excel Stock Quotes

Press ALT-F11 on your keyboard, which will open the VBE. Double click on the DEMO sheet in the left pane. We will enter out code on the right. To begin with, enter these lines:

Option Explicit
Private rnAR_Dest As Range
Private rnAR_Table As Range
Private stAR_ConfigSheetName As String

Always start a module with Option Explicit. It forces you to define your variable types, and will save you untold grief at debugging time. In VBA each variable can be one of a number of variable types, such as a Long or a String or a Double or a Range, etc. For right now, don’t worry too much about this – just follow along.

Sidebar on Variable Naming Conventions

Variable names must begin with a letter. Everyone and their brother seems to have a different method for naming variables. I like to prefix mine with context. The first couple of letters are in lower case and represent the type of the variable. This allows me to look at the variable anywhere it’s used and immediately know its type. In this project I’ve also prefaced the variables with “AR_” so that I know the variable is related to the ActiveRange implementation. In larger projects this would be useful. After the underscore, I include a description of what the variable is used for. That’s my method.

In the above code we have defined three variables and their types. Since these are defined at the top of a worksheet module, they will be available to each procedure that we define in this module. This is known as scope. In VBA, variables can have scope restricted to a procedure, to a module (as we have done above), or they can be global in scope and hence available to the entire program, regardless of module. Again we are putting all of the code for this project in the code module of the DEMO worksheet. Every worksheet has a code module. Code modules can also be added to a workbook that are not associated with any worksheet. UserForms can be added and they have code modules as well. Finally, a special type of code module, called a class module, can also be added. Any global variables would be available to procedures in all of these. However, it is good practice to always limit the scope of your variables to the level where you need them.

In that vein, notice that the three variables above are defined with the word Private. This specifically restricts their scope to this module.

Every worksheet module has the built-in capability of firing off a bit of code in response to a change in any of the sheet’s cell values. This is called the Worksheet_Change event. If we select Worksheet from the combo box at the top and Change in the other combo box, the VBE will kindly define for us a new procedure in this module. It will look like this:

Adding Worksheet_Change Event

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
End Sub

Notice that by default this procedure is defined as Private. This is good and as a result the procedure will not show up as a macro. Notice the word Target near the end of the first line. This represents the range that has been changed. Place code between these two lines so that the entire procedure now looks like this:

The Heart of our Excel Stock Quotes Code – Worksheet_Change()

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)

ActivateRange

If Worksheets(stAR_ConfigSheetName).[ar_enabled] Then

If Intersect(Target, rnAR_Dest) Is Nothing Then Exit Sub

If Target.Column <> rnAR_Dest.Column And Target.Row <> rnAR_Dest.Row Then

PostProcessActiveRange

Exit Sub

End If

ActiveRangeResponse

End If

End Sub

That may look like a handful but it’s really rather simple. Let’s step through it. The first line is ActivateRange. This is the name of another sub-procedure that will be defined in a moment. This line just directs the program to run that sub, which provides values to the three variables we defined at the top. Again, since those variables were defined at the top of the module, their values will be available to all procedures in the module. The ActivateRange procedure gives them values.

Next we see this odd looking fellow:

If Intersect(Target, rnAR_Dest) Is Nothing Then Exit Sub

All this does is check to see if the Target (the cell that was changed on the worksheet) is part of our ActiveRange. If it is the procedure continues. If it’s not, the procedure is exited.

The next line checks to see if the cell that was changed is in the first column or first row of the ActiveRange. If it is, the post processing is skipped. If the change is any other part of the ActiveRange, another sub-procedure (defined below) is run to do some post processing of the retrieved data, and then exits this procedure.

If the cell that changed was in the first column or the first row, the program runs another sub-procedure, called ActiveRangeResponse, which is also defined below. ActiveRangeResponse builds the URL for YF, deletes any previous QueryTables related to the ActiveRange, and creates a new QueryTable as specified in our configuration sheet.

That’s it. The heart of the whole program resides here in the Worksheet_Change event procedure. It relies on a number of other subprocedures, but this is the whole program. When a change is made in the ActiveRange’s first column (stock symbols) or its first row (stock attributes), ActiveRangeResponse runs and our ActiveRange is updated.

Understanding other sub-procedures that help us get the stock quotes:

So let’s look at those supporting subprocedures. The first is ActivateRange:

Private Sub ActivateRange()

stAR_ConfigSheetName = “arConfig_” & Me.Name

Set rnAR_Dest = Me.Range(Worksheets(stAR_ConfigSheetName).[ar_range].Value)

Set rnAR_Table = rnAR_Dest.Resize(1, 1).Offset(1, 1)

Worksheets(stAR_ConfigSheetName).[ar_YFAttributes] = GetCurrentYahooFinancialAttributeTags

End Sub

Again, all this does is give values to our three module level variables. In addition it builds the concatenated string of YF Tag Codes required for the URL. It does this by calling a function that I’ve defined at the very bottom of the module, called GetCurrentYahooFinancialAttributeTags.

The next subprocedure is ActiveRangeResponse:

Private Sub ActiveRangeResponse()

Dim vArr As Variant

Dim stCnx As String

Const YAHOO_FINANCE_URL = “http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=[SYMBOLS]&f=[ATTRIBUTES]”

vArr = Application.Transpose(rnAR_Dest.Resize(rnAR_Dest.Rows.Count – 1, 1).Offset(1))

stCnx = Replace(YAHOO_FINANCE_URL, “[SYMBOLS]”, Replace(WorksheetFunction.Trim(Join(vArr)), ” “, “+”))

stCnx = Replace(stCnx, “[ATTRIBUTES]”, Worksheets(stAR_ConfigSheetName).[ar_YFAttributes])

AddQueryTable rnAR_Table.Resize(UBound(vArr)), “URL;” & stCnx

End Sub

Notice that here we have variables defined at the top of this procedure and consequently their scope is limited to this procedure only. This means that we could have the same variable names defined in other procedures but those variables would not be related to these and would have completely different values.

Next notice that we have defined a constant. This is good practice, as it forces us to specify what the constant value is by naming the constant. I could have just used the value where I later use the constant, but then the question arises as to what is this value and where did it come from. Here I have named the value, YAHOO_FINANCE_URL, removing all doubt as to its purpose.

The next line is this:

vArr = Application.Transpose(rnAR_Dest.Resize(rnAR_Dest.Rows.Count - 1, 1).Offset(1))

and it deserves some explanation. Let me back up by saying that whenever we write or read multiple cells from a worksheet we should always try to do it in one go, rather than one cell at a time. The more cells involved the more important this is. Otherwise we pay a massive penalty in processing time. One of the best optimization techniques available is to replace code that loops through cell reads/writes and replace it with code that reads/writes all the cells at once. It can literally be hundreds to thousands of times faster.

Here we are interested in getting the list of all of the stock symbols in the first column of the ActiveRange. So how do we get them in one shot? We use something called a variant array. Notice that we defined vArr at the top of this procedure. A variant array is a special kind of variable that holds a list of values and it DOES NOT CARE what variable types those values are. This is important when retrieving data from a sheet because the data could be numbers, text, Boolean (True or False), etc. Variants are powerful, but they are much slower than other variable types, such as a Long for numeric data for example. However, in the case of retrieving or writing large chunks of data from/to a sheet the slight penalty of the variant is dwarfed by the massive increase in the speed of data transfer.

It’s very simple to retrieve range data (regardless of the size) into a variant array. All you do is:

v = range

where v is defined as a variant and range is any VBA reference to a worksheet range. And magically all of the values in that range are now in v. Note that v is not connected to the range. A change in any of v’s values does not propogate back to the range, and likewise a change to the range does not make it’s way to v all by itself. v will ALWAYS be a two-demensional array. The first dimension is the index of the rows, the second dimension is the index of the columns. So v(1,1) will refer to the value that came from the top left cell in the range. v(6,9) will hold the value that came from the cell in the range at row 6 and column 9.

For most circumstances this two-dimensional format is fine. But we are only retrieving one column of stock symbols. The procedure will still give us a two-dimensional array, with the column dimension being only 1 element wide. This is a shame because VBA has a wonderful function called Join that allows you in one step (no loop) to concatenate every element of an array into a string. You can even specify a custom string to delimit (go in-between) each element in the output string. The problem is that Join only works on single dimensioned arrays 🙁

But there’s always a way, right? We can use the Application.Transpose method on the 2-D array and presto we get a 1-D array. The rest of the line just specifies what range (the stock symbols) to grab.

The next two lines are:

stCnx = Replace(YAHOO_FINANCE_URL, "[SYMBOLS]", Replace(WorksheetFunction.Trim(Join(vArr)), " ", "+"))

stCnx = Replace(stCnx, "[ATTRIBUTES]", Worksheets(stAR_ConfigSheetName).[ar_YFAttributes])

Again a handful, but all we are doing here is replacing the monikers, [SYMBOLS] and [ATTRIBUTES] in the YAHOO_FINANCE_URL constant with the list of stock symbols (delimited by a plus sign) and the string of attributes.

In the final line of the procedure:

AddQueryTable rnAR_Table.Resize(UBound(vArr)), "URL;" & stCnx

we are running another subprocedure called, AddQueryTable and we are telling it where to place the new QueryTable and providing the connection string for the QueryTable, which in this case is the YF URL that we just built.

Nothing unusual happens in the AddQueryTable sub. It just deletes any existing AR related QueryTables and adds the new one according to the options in the configuration sheet.

The PostProcessActiveRange sub is interesting:

Private Sub PostProcessActiveRange()

If rnAR_Dest.Columns.Count > 2 Then

Application.DisplayAlerts = False

rnAR_Table.Resize(rnAR_Dest.Rows.Count).TextToColumns Destination:=rnAR_Table, DataType:=xlDelimited, Comma:=True

Application.DisplayAlerts = True

Worksheets(stAR_ConfigSheetName).[ar_LocalTimeLastUpdate] = Now

End If

End Sub

Processing Yahoo Finance Output using Query Table & Text-Import Utility:

As mentioned before the data from YF comes back as a CSV file. The QueryTable dumps this into one column. If you were only retrieving one attribute for each stock this would be fine as is. However, two or more attributes is going to result in unwanted commas and multiple attribute values squished into the first column of the QueryTable output. Unfortunately this is poor design by Microsoft, especially when you consider that the QueryTable does not behave like this when it is retrieving SQL data or opening a Text file from disk. You can actually specify this operation to be a text file and it will properly spread the output over all of the columns. To do so, you specify the disk location as being the URL of the YF CSV file, but as Murphy would have it, it’s unbelievably slow and pops up a status dialog as it slowly retrieving the CSV. Using the URL instruction instead of the TEXT instruction at the beginning of the connection string is incredibly fast in comparison, but dumps all of the data into the first column.

So what to do? We’ll just employ Excel’s built-in TextToColumns capability and bam, our data is where we want it.

Our finalized stock quotes fetcher worksheet should look like this:

Excel Stock Quotes - Final workbook - Demo

Download Excel Stock Quotes Macro:

Click here to download the excel stock quotes macro workbook. It will be much easier to follow this tutorial if you refer to the workbook.

Final Thoughts on Excel Stock Quotes

The ActiveRange technique is quite versatile. It can be implemented with other data sources such as SQL, or even lookups to other Excel files, or websites.

In this example it provides a nice way to easily track whatever stocks you may have interest in and up to 84 different attributes of those stocks. You can enable and disable the activeness of the ActiveRange on the fly. You can set the AR to AutoRefresh the data at periods that you set or to not refresh at all.

This is a basic implementation. For example, changing the AutoRefresh setting will have no effect until a new QueryTable is built. That won’t happen until you also add or change a stock symbol or add or change an attribute. An easy enhancement would be to add a little code to the arConfig_DEMO code module to respond to changes to the ar_AutoRefresh named range cell.

Another enhancement would be to eliminate the slight flicker of the update by moving the QueryTable destination to the arConfig_DEMO and then doing the TextToColumns with the destination set to the DEMO sheet. In an effort to simplify this tutorial I have left these easy enhancements as an exercise for you to implement.

Have a question or doubt? Please Ask

Do you have any questions or doubts on the above technique? Have you used ActiveRange or similar implementations earlier? What is your experience? Please share your thoughts / questions using comments.

I read Chandoo.org regularly and will be monitoring the post for questions. But you can also reach me at my blog:

Further References & Help on Excel Stock Quotes [Added by Chandoo]

This is a guest post by Daniel Ferry of Excel Hero.

Excel Hero is dedicated to expanding your notion of what is possible in MS Excel and to inspiring you to become an Excel Hero at your workplace. It has many articles and sample workbooks on advanced Excel development and advanced Excel charting.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

63 Responses to “To-do List with Priorities using Excel”

  1. Mario 8a says:

    Very useful, you always give us good ideas for our excel files. Thanks
    I've been working on calendars leagues. If you must watch a bit on my blog. http://economiaemergente.com/
     

  2. Jason says:

    EXCELLENTE!!!! 

  3. Rasheed says:

    Needed .. thanks for sharing

  4. [...] To-do List with Priorities using Excel [...]

  5. Gregg says:

    Excellent spreadsheet.  Nice work.

  6. Jose Pedro says:

    Ciao Peppe!, Tante grazie per compartire il tuo eccellentissimo lavoro in Excel. Tu hai a web blog? - Grazie Chandoo per la publicazione.
    Hello Peppe, Thank you so much for sharing your most excellent work in Excel. Have you a web blog? - Thanks Chandoo for publication.

    • PEPPE says:

      Hi Jose,
       tanks for your appreciations and tks to Chandoo for publishing
      my little job.  it's a pleasure for me to be mentioned on my guru's blog. 
      Just to reply to Jose, I don't have a blog, but if you want to share some ideas or need some help don't hesitate to contact me also on twitter like @peppinogreco.
      Regards
      Peppe 

  7. Great!
     
    I've learned a little bit of VBA during the last year, and get addicted to it, but sometimes, it makes us forget how powerful excel is, without macros.
    Nice post!
     
    Cauê

  8. Hi Chandru,
     A very good post. Though I had been reading your posts for a longer time, did not post any questions so far except for wishing and appreciating.
     I have a question here. I had attempted to do something on my own (a little R & D) on the new year resolution template itself. However, I could not do it fully.  Thankfully, you had provided the link for each step , which was exactly what I was looking for 🙂 
     I had done with the check boxes and also conditional formatting. I am glad indeed. I am able to highlight a row when a check box is checked. However, the value of the checkbox gets printed in the same cell which it was linked to. How can I avoid it ? I could not see it in the sample excel files you had provided.
     I appreciate your help in this.
     
    Cheers,
    Raghavan alias Saravanan M
    Jeddah | Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    • Chandoo says:

      Hi Raghavan... Thanks for your comments and I am glad you are trying to build this on your own. There is no way we can avoid printing the check box value in linked cell. If you do not want to see "TRUE or FALSE" in a cell, you do one of the following.

      • Link check box to a cell in an un-used column. Then hide that column.
      • Link check box to a cell in a different sheet. Then hide that sheet.
      • Link check box to a cell and then hide the cell contents by formatting it with custom code ;;; (more on this here: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/06/05/hide-cell/ )
  9. Daniel says:

    Dal Messico grazie tanti Peppe.

    A great idea, thanks for shearing it with all of us.
     
    Daniel
     

  10. Lovely idea - downloading now.

    What software is used to create the animated gif of the template in action?  Love to replicate to simple demos on my site.

    Cheers
    Glen 

  11. John says:

    Raghavan

    I just make the font white for the cell linked to the checkbox or if you have shading applied then font colour = shading so its there but is not seen or printed.
    John  

  12. Utku says:

    Excellent! Thank you very much.

  13. Sully says:

    Excellent thanks!

  14. Suresh says:

    Happy New Year.
    Looks simple but excellent. Never knew you could do this without VBA.
    Thanks Pepe

  15. Henrique de Albuquerque says:

    good day,
    Please, how can I create a chart with scroll bar that is also dynamic in PPT.
    I created the chart in Excel, but I need this information to be presented dynamically in powerpoint and when I put the bar rolls loses functionality. please can you help me?

  16. Benny says:

    Come nella migliore tradizione:grandi ma semplici idde dall'Italia.
    bravo Peppe

  17. Vaslo says:

    This was outstanding.  I have had two bosses give me to-do lists that I was very unhappy with.  I went and added 15 more lines to this and it was really easy to so with a little reformatting and changing some links.  THANKS!!!

  18. Aparajita says:

    Thanks. really usuful. Will be waiting for such thing in future.

  19. Juan says:

    Great tutorial! It would be interesting if someone could explain how to do the chart with detail: how to insert the values of the horizontal axis, to create the horizontal bar (the outlines) and the bar itself, etc

  20. DJ says:

    Good Concept!
    Downloaded it but, my Excel 2007 hangs and I have to recover it few times. Finally it opens but, everything is distorted.
    Am I doing something wrong?
     
    -DJ

  21. tadovn says:

    Interesting idea.
    You give e new way to track my actual planning.
    But instead of using thermometer in this case, we can use a simple bar chart , with data is the total done.
    Reasoning for that, with thermometer, you have to format all the small part of data with the same color. If you have more than 10 parts, it will take your time to finish.
    I tested and it shown the same.
     
    I'm searching for How to automatically add check box link to a new cells when we add new item?
    Thanks for your interesting idea.

  22. Munir says:

    Thank you Peppe & Chandoo for sharing an awesome idea.

  23. Sara says:

    How do i increase the list ? I cant just drag down can I ? the check boxes perform the same way

  24. RAVI XAVIER says:

    VERY EXCELLENT THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

  25. Talia says:

    How do you increase the list? Formatting of the check boxes and shading etc does not copy correctly if using copy and paste or dragging cells down...

  26. Pradeep says:

    Thanks for this useful to do list.

    I have the same question as TADOVN. This blog doesn't properly give instruction on how to add new task row. Following are my queries.

    1) How do I add a new row?
    2) If I copy paste the last row to create a new row, the check box get duplicated, i.e. if I click on the new check box on the new row, the previous check box also gets checked.

    So the simple question is.. how do I add a new row so that it behaves the same way as other rows?

  27. Angela G. says:

    Thank you very much! Great to do list template.

  28. Celine says:

    Thanks for the template.

    From an NGO organisation in Malaysia

  29. Leah says:

    Will someone please answer the question about how to add additional rows to this list? I love it, but this is a fatal flaw, as I frequently have many more tasks.

    Thank you!

    • Dennis says:

      Below is how I added additional rows:

      1) Select both columns H and N, right clicked, and clicked Unhide to reveal the formulas.
      2) Select row 12 on the To Do List, copy it, and insert it below in the next row.
      3) Change the 12 in cell C22 to a 13.
      3) Drag your mouse and copy the formulas from cells I15, J15, and K15.
      4) Paste the formulas below in cells I16, J16, and K16.
      5) Right click on the check box in cell F22.
      6) Click Format Control.
      7) Click the Control tab.
      8) In the Cell Link box, change the I15 to I16.
      9) Repeat the steps above. (Change I16 in the Cell Link box to I17...I17 to I18, etc.)
      10) If you are not seeing Format Control when you right click the check box, you need to make the Developer Tab available.

    • Dennis says:

      Leah,

      If you follow my previous instructions, you still may need to go back and change the formulas in column K. They calculate the priority weights and go in consecutive order as you go down the column:

      IFERROR(1/E10,0)
      IFERROR(1/E11,0)
      IFERROR(1/E12,0), etc.

      Some of you who are more Excel savy may be able to figure out how to copy the formulas quicker. This is just the way I figured it out.

  30. Bandula says:

    I am sure I would love this and it will help me to accomplice my tasks efficiently . Thanks Buddy

  31. Sander says:

    How would I be able to delete one of the row (not use 6 for example) so it won't calculate it with the progress?

  32. […] 42,416] Angry Formulas game… [Visitors: 36,392] Learn top 10 Excel features [Visitors: 25,723] To-do list with priorities – Excel templates [Visitors: 19,947] Introduction to Power Pivot [Visitors: 21,298] Best new features in Excel 2013 […]

  33. […] 2013 Calendar, 2012 Calendar, 2011 Calendar, New Year Resolution Tracker, Picture Calendar Template and Todo list template […]

  34. […] ?? ????? ??????????? ?????? ?????? ????? ? ????????????? ??? Excel. ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? […]

  35. Victor says:

    Thank you so much for this post. I took me a bit to figure out how the checkboxes link to the rest of the sheet, but now that I've got it I've created a new page for every day so I can track tasks going forward. I've also added work tasks side-by-side with personal tasks. Once I did that I also thought it would be neat to see how productive I am week over week so I added a nice summery page. The summary builds on the percentage completion for personal and work tasks.

    Love this template - so versatile and yet simple.

    My next project is to get standard weighting for certain tasks so I don't have to keep remembering them.

    Cheers,

    Victor

  36. Jeff Carlsen says:

    I like this template. I may modify how the checkboxes work though for a couple reasons:

    1) It's a pain to add more rows. If I want to add 10 more rows, it appears that I have to re-point each new object to the appropriate link-cell. Otherwise, they all point back to the copied row - checking one causes all of them to check.

    2) I can't group and collapse rows in the checklist without all the objects stacking together and remaining visible in the lowest non-collapsed row. With a simple "x", this would be ok.

    One solution would be to have a simple "x" instead of a checkbox object. I could just use an "x" to mark complete, and make the TRUE/FALSE based on an If formula (If "x" then TRUE; otherwise FALSE).

  37. Kris says:

    I downloaded the file, but it is a ZIP file with several subfolders and xml files. There is no workbook here. How do I open this in Excel?

    thank you for the help and excellent ideas you share.

    • Hui... says:

      @Kris
      Yes, Excel files are special Zip files that actually contain a number of files including your data
      If the file opens like that save it locally as a *.zip file and rename it to a *.xlsx file

      Open with excel normally

  38. s.f says:

    How do you change the color when it is completed....I have multiple companies and need to color code this template.

    Thank you.

  39. Callie says:

    Hello! I have added additional rows, fixed it so that the check boxes work individually, AND made it so that the #% changes when each box is checked -- however the status bar won't move past the midway mark.

    Any ideas on how I can get the progress bar to fill up the entire way once the list is complete?

    • Cheryl says:

      If you right click the status bar, select 'Select Data' and go to 'Chart Data Range' and revise to include your expanded range. The bar chart colors may default to a predefined style. Right click the chart to reformat the Chart Area.

    • Cheryl says:

      Or, to change the bar colors, I populated all rows w/ activities and rank and then left clicked the bar chart color that I wanted to change - went up to the ribbon under the home tab, selected the new bar color from the fill color dropdown.

  40. Cheryl says:

    Love the instant gratification of the status bar! Genius!

  41. Frank says:

    Thank you so much, what a great tool! God bless you for doing this for free!!

  42. rahul saldanha says:

    Awesome
    Nice to show power of excel.

  43. Hui... says:

    Over in the Chandoo.org Forums, Asshu has updated this witha VB Interface

    Have a look and use if from: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/to-do-list-vb-interface.28973/

  44. Chirag Raval says:

    Dear All,

    There are good job done here & its very helpful for all.
    God Bless You to you all for your valuable working.
    Regards,
    Chirag

  45. Jake says:

    Hi guys,

    I've added additional rows, but the percentages in the thermo-meter don't reflect this when the boxes are checked. I'm lost with how to change this, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

    Jake

  46. Peggy Wong says:

    Hi Chandoo, how you do it for all this check list. it is using Excel VBA, I am not good it that.. still leaning part. and I was trying to figure out. Trying to understand all vba code and meaning and when I use which code.

    do you have any guide line on this, i mean. Exp: dim is what, string etc:

    for all this checking list does need to use VBA?

    Thankyou
    Peggy

Leave a Reply