Do you have an Excel report or graphs that need to be emailed to various people every month? We can use Excel automation features to do this task quite easily.
The inspiration – A client request for Excel Email Solution
The idea for this came from a recent project I did for a client. They wanted me to build an Excel workbook which shows latest sales summary and then allows them to email the snapshot to the relevant people in one click.
Here is a snapshot of the solution I created for them (with dummy data):
- You select a product and see the dynamic report
- Pick the person who will receive the report (from drop-down list)
- Click on the “Send email” button to send the email
The ingredients – What we need
Here, I am using 3 main ingredients.
- A report created in Excel 365
- Office Scripts to generate the email contents and trigger the mail process
- Power Automate flow to send the email
Below is a schematic of the whole process.
The Recipe – How to send emails from Excel
The actual recipe is a bit detailed and harder to explain in text only format. So I made a video with the whole thing. Watch it here or on my YouTube channel. I have included the key steps as text below too.
Scripts & Instructions:
We can send either text or images as the email. In our case, I have both text content and images. The images come from a grouped object named Group 5.
GenerateReport Script:
Go to your “Automate” ribbon in Excel and click on “New Script” button.
In the script window, paste below script and customize the names as needed (refer to the video for explanation on the script).
function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook):myOutput {
// Your code here
let ws = workbook.getWorksheet("Report");
let repGroup = ws.getShape("Group 5");
const repImage = repGroup.getImageAsBase64(ExcelScript.PictureFormat.png);
const emailSubject = ws.getRange("c2").getText();
const sendTo = ws.getRange("I22").getText();
console.log(emailSubject);
console.log(sendTo);
return {repImage,emailSubject,sendTo};
}
interface myOutput {
repImage: string;
emailSubject: string;
sendTo: string;
}
Set up the Power Automate Flow
- Go to Power Automate website and login with your credentials
- Create a new instant cloud flow
- Set the trigger as “When HTTP request is received”
- Add “Run Script” step in Excel
- Add Send an email (v2) step
- Set up the flow as depicted below.
Obtain the Trigger URL
- Save your flow
- Now go back the “trigger” step (step 1 of your flow)
- Make sure you set the method to GET
- Expand and copy the URL.
Back to Excel to make one more Script
We are nearly done. We just need to add one more script & a button in our sales report so that we can initiate the flow from Excel.
Add one more script in Excel and use the below code.
function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) {
// Your code here
const triggerURL = "___YOUR TRIGGER URL___";
let request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", triggerURL, false);
request.send(null);
}
- Save your script.
- From “Code Editor” click on the options menu for your script and use the “Add Button” to add a button on Excel worksheet.
- Whenever you click on this button, your flow will start.
Other ways to Automate this:
We can also use VBA to create & send emails automatically. I have previously written about that approach too. Read this article for VBA Excel Email Sender.
VBA vs. Office Script approach – which is better?
Both technologies offer automation. I have summarized the pros & cons of each technology below.
As of 2023 March, my preference is to use VBA for things like Email automation as it is easy to control and deploy.
VBA
VBA Pros:
- Works in any version of Excel
- Easy to learn, easy to code
- Lots of help & resources
- Very old and stable language base
- Works with Excel, Office & Windows Objects & API
VBA Cons:
- Can't use with Web / Mobile version of Excel
- Not easy to integrate with Cloud platforms (Power Automate, Sharepoint etc.)
- Security problems
Office Script
Office Script Pros:
- Works on Web / Mobile versions too
- Integrates with cloud platforms (Power Automate etc.)
- Future ready technology
Office Script Cons:
- No easy help or resources
- Hard language to learn and master
- Doesn't work in older versions of Excel
- Can't use all objects of Excel. Will not work with Windows API etc. too
- Needs costly subscription plans to use
- Runs on server, thus no control and susceptible to downtimes etc.
Thanks to Mark Proctor
I got the idea for URL trigger from Mark Proctor. Thanks Mark for the fantastic work 🙂
Got questions?
Do you have any questions reg. this implementation. Post a comment so that our community can help you.
20 Responses to “Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula”
Hi Chandoo,
First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Wish you and your family another fruitful year ahead.
To answer your question: Power Query is the best way to trim. 🙂
Btw, if Power Query is not available, then formula would absolutely do... but did you forget to mention also Char 32?
One more question: Is the trailing minus meant to be a negative number? Maybe only the sender knows... 🙂
Cheers,
I just see your PQ way, it is amazing, I think it is the most simple way.
No idea how it did it?
I know these spaces can be a real pain but these days I advise Excel users to learn and use Flash Fill and that will learn what to do pretty quickly.
Highlight range to be cleaned. Then, in Replace, hold down the Alt key and type 0160. Replace with nothing.
I accomplished this by writing a macro to go through all the possible unprintable characters. Looped through the range.
@Steve
Brute force works just as well, its just slower
I use a different method here. First, I will copy the data from Excel and paste it in a notepad. In Notepad, I will do a Find Blanks (Space " ") and Replace (Empty) with nothing.
Then you can copy the data from Notepad and paste it back to Excel which will be a perfect number as you desire.
But Thanks for the formula. Its probably the 2nd out of 8 tricks as Chandoo mentioned. Waiting for the rest among 8 from other users 🙂
Hi....
You don't always need notepad for that. I use the Find/Replace is Excel works just fine.
I don't understand the x's. Why weren't they removed in the formula? Or are they part of some sort of numeric formatting that I'm not familiar with? I saw how you handled the non-breaking spaces and the dashes, but am confused about what role the x's played in all this.
Thanks!
Hi Andrew ,
The xs have been used solely to demarcate the actual data text ; thus , without the x in place at the end of text , as in :
x 4,124,500.00 x
it would be impossible to know that there are unwanted trailing characters , in this case , after the last 0.
These xs are not part of the original data text , nor are they used in the formulae ; they are put in only so that readers can visualize the individual items of data as they are in practice. Think of them as imaginary delimiters.
Oh, that makes sense! Thank you for the explanation. I had a feeling it was something along those lines.
You can type this character using the Keys Alt+0160.
Very useful to replace this Character using Find and Select resource.
For many years, my jobs have included ETL tasks and I built this macro to help long, long ago. I tweak it every now and again. Many co-workers, past and present, have it wired to a button on their toolbar.
Sub Clean_and_Trim()
'CAUTION: Strips leading zeroes -- do not use on zipcodes, etc.
If Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
Revert = 1
ElseIf Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual Then
Revert = 0
End If
For Each Cell In Selection
For x = Len(Cell.Value) To 1 Step -1
If Asc(Mid(Cell.Value, x, 1)) = 160 Then
Cell.Replace What:=Chr(160), Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, MatchCase:=True
End If
If Asc(Mid(Cell.Value, x, 1)) = 32 Then
Cell.Replace What:=Chr(32), Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, MatchCase:=True
End If
Next x
If Cell.Value "" Then
Cell.Value = Application.Clean(Application.Trim(Cell.Value))
End If
Next
If Revert = 1 Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
ElseIf Revert = 0 Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
End If
End Sub
This is awesome! What if you have several characters you need to have removed? What would be the easiest way as I can imagine there are several ways.?
# - 35
$ - 36
- 62
/ - 47
, - 44
. - 46
" - 34
: - 58
This is typical case of a Fitbit data export to Csv file. Each number has CHAR160 as thousand separator.. how smart Fitbit, thank you 😉
By the way, i prefer to copy the character, and use find and replace.
Sometimes it happens if you copy a table from outlook and paste it in excel. When you apply formula on those cells you will get error. What i use to do is
copy one character that looks like space,
select the entire range,
go to Find and replace,
Paste the copied character in Find option
Leave the replace option unfilled..
click on replace all..
All the errors shall be converted in to proper values..
Process looks lengthier.. but it is one of the simplest method
If Clean, Trim, and Substitute, or Find and Replace does not complete the job, I usually enter a value of 1 in an empty cell. Copy the Value of 1, Highlight the range of text numbers, and Paste Special, Values, Multiply. This site is great!
You can use Dose for Excel Add-In that can quickly clean huge data with one click besides more than +100 new functions and features to add to your Excel to save time and effort.
https://www.zbrainsoft.com
Hi,
I have a problem in excel. The sheet attached herewith.
TABLE CONFIG 2/6
A B C D E F G H
1 WEIGHT1 43,599 WEIGH2 62500 WEIGHT3 77000 WEIGHT4 66,500
2 DEDUCTION1 15,000 DEDUCTION1 15,000 TEMP 0 DEDUCTION2 11,005
3 RESULT 58,599 RESULT-1 77,500 RESULT-2 77,000 RESULT-3 77,505
4 RESULT SUBSTRACT 0 0 0
5 REQUIRED VALUE 77,500 77,000 77,505
Note: 1- RESULT (58599) IS TO BE DEDUCTION EITHER FROM D4 OR F4 OR H4 WHICHEVER IS MOST
LEAST CELL AMONG RESULT-1 OR RESULT-2 OR RESULT 3.
2-HENCE, RESULT VALUE $B$3 IS TO BE PRESENTED ON CELL EITHER D4 OR F4 OR H4 WHICHER IS
MOST LEAST VALUE
3-FORMULA =IF(E8<H8,$B$9,IF(E8<J8,$B$9,IF(H8<J8,$B$9,IF(H8<E8,$B$9,IF(J8<H8,$B$9))))))
CREATED ON CELL D4,F4 & H4 DID NOT WORK.
PLS FOR YOUR HELP.
THANK YOU
@R
Why not ask the question in the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
You can attach a file there