Skip to main content

Loading an Excel Add-In

 

Microsoft offers a range of Add-Ins and other extensions to Excel’s normal functionality. These are accessed most easily from the ‘Developer’ ribbon.

The Developer Tab

Clicking the Add-Ins icon, offers the user a list of all Add-Ins currently available to your Excel program. The problem comes when your particular program isn’t listed there. Even when you know where the Add-In file is and double click it, the functionality is still not activated.

According to SuperUser.com, the problem results from security patch in KB31152, released in July 2016. Apparently, Microsoft software engineers have said:

"With this update, we changed the behaviour of Excel so that it will not load certain file types (including .xlam) when they are untrusted. The easiest workaround is to find the add-in that is causing you trouble, right-clicking on it in Windows Explorer, and checking Unblock"

However, SuperUser.com recommend placing the add-in in a Trusted Location (in Excel, go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Trusted Locations).

The Trusted Locations list


You should note that to place an Add-In in any of the Trusted Locations, you must have administrative authority for the PC. This may require logging as the Administrator or getting him / her to load the file for you. This procedure makes the Add-In available for use but does not activate it.

All loaded Add-Ins can be activated or deactivated from the Developer ribbon, as discussed earlier. The checked programs load automatically on opening Excel.

Your loaded Add-Ins list


Check or uncheck your Add-In as desired. All checked programs load on to the Add-Ins tab of the Ribbon.

The Add-Ins tab can get crowded


Depending on how active you are at building your own Add-Ins, this tab can get a little crowded. Unchecking options that you do not use frequently may be helpful.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cell Maps - Critical Comments

Cell maps are intended as tools for reviewing spreadsheets. If you spot an error or an inconsistency in the cell map this should be recorded and, if practicable, corrected. The cell mapping software provides a method for recording a reviewer's comments. All comments are linked to a specific map (or data table), The comments for a workbook under review are collated in a single worksheet. In this case, there's just one comment. The comment above refers to the area highlighted towards the bottom of the map below and are hyperlinked.to the specific area of the map through the column headed 'Map/Source Link'. The top left cell the source range provides a link back to the 'Comments. worksheet'. The yellow cells suggest that users should be entering information for collection by a formula, but which one.  At the this point I went back to the orginal worksheet and traced the dependents for some of these 'so called' user entry cells - also coloured yellow as it ...
Post a Comment
Read more

ACBA Mapping: Employing ‘UsedRange’ in Excel

When reviewing a worksheet the ACBA Mapping software uses VBA’s ‘UsedRange’ function to identify the full scope of the sheet. This function is excellent for identifying separate ranges employed in a worksheet, but has some drawbacks. One of these drawbacks has been identified while reviewing the Enron corpus of files ( https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Enron_Spreadsheets_and_Emails/1221767 ) The Enron corpus of spreadsheets and other correspondence is huge. Felienne Hermans however has whittled the number of workbooks down to 16,189 unique items.   https://www.felienne.com/archives/3634   The workbook that clearly displayed the UsedRange issue is named ‘benjamin_rogers__938__historical outages.xlsx’. Clearly the files have been renamed to prevent duplicates. In this blog though I will refer to it as ‘Historical Outages’. In the original Mapping software, users were advised when the ‘UsedRange’ exceeded half a million cells. This allows the user to escape from the proc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Big Brother at a Distance

We know that our spreadsheets should be functional and error free, but there is  a tension between how we review a spreadsheet to ensure that it is correct and the functionality of the spreadsheet itself. None of us like Big Brother breathing down our necks too closely. In What is a Cell Map?  I discussed the creation of a simplified version of a spreadsheet to aid review and error trapping. However, the map is itself a spreadsheet. If you created maps for each worksheet in your workbook, the workbook would quickly bloat and become unmanageable. The obvious answer is to post your maps somewhere else, but clearly linked to primary workbook. The ACBA-Mapping package does just that. It generates a separate Map Book to hold all the spreadsheet maps (and other analyses) associated with the parent workbook. The parent workbook has a new worksheet that maintains a summary of all the detailed analyses generated for the workbook. This new worksheet is called 'DataList_and_MappingC...
Post a Comment
Read more