Next I’m going to look at some of the tools that are available for writing xlls.
These are the ones I’m going to cover:
- XLL+ from Planatech
- Add-in Express
- ExcelDNA
- Possibly one or two others time/trials permitting.
They each have different strengths and weaknesses and so each will be more suitable for different groups of people, and different jobs. And thats the bit I want to cover. So I’m not especially going to give blow by blow instructions as covered in each products help file. the intention is to give a flavour of the effort involved and the returns for that effort.
Hopefully we already know the basic requirements for (UDF) xlls
- a function that takes some parameters and returns a value, or set of values
- a way to tell Excel about it so it can be called from a cell.
- Thats it.
If you think there is a tool that I have missed then let me know. I’m kind of writing this from the perspective of an Excel dev who want to get into fast worksheet functions. A few of the tools I have tried seems to be targeting a different group so I may not mention them.
Yeah I know this is out of order, not sure how come I missed this before posting the XLL+ review. ho hum.
cheers
Simon
