Just curious - DaleWatson

[TonyU]

[tt]
Hey bro, what do you do on a daily basis? do you actually work for this site or simply enjoy helping all of us in here, everytime I've posted you always provide me with the correct answer. I commend you.

[tt]"A Successful man is one who can build a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him"[/tt]

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[coolcarls]

I'll second that!!!

 

[DaleWatson123321]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the compliment.

No, I don't work for Tek-Tips. To my knowledge, none of the contributors receive any kind of remuneration.

I'm currently privileged to be in a "training phase" with my employer, where I've been asked to learn VBA, primarily as it relates to Microsoft Office. As I'm sure you can appreciate, it's MUCH easier to learn anything when one has real applications to work with. I therefore decided, with my employer’s consent, to help resolve problems through Tek-Tips.

A brief background description... While I’ve never had any formal VBA training, I’ve had a "heavy-duty" background in developing significant applications using Lotus 123's programming language. Lotus 123 HAD an extremely powerful yet easy-to-use programming language, but it was dropped in favor of LotusScript which is supposed to be similar to VBA.

One of the main areas I feel I’ve been able to contribute to the “Excel world”, is in the area of Excel’s “database functionality”. This is due to having extensively used Lotus 123’s powerful set of "database functions" to manipulate data. Based on this experience, I became determined to utilize Excel’s database functionality to the fullest, in spite of sub-standard documentation and a couple of false error messages in this part of Excel.

I also quickly learned that Excel unfortunately falls short of Lotus 123 in this area. While pre-Windows versions of Lotus 123 had a "full set" of database functions, Excel STILL does not have the following database functions: Data Find, Data Modify, Data Delete, and Data Append.

I have Excel ’97. It would be GREAT if anyone with the latest version of Excel could tell me that Microsoft has finally included these missing functions. When Microsoft finally “sees the light” and includes these missing database functions, it will certainly make for MUCH easier application development.

As it is, however, Excel’s database functions are STILL powerful and should definitely be utilized whenever possible. The reason is quite simple. It is FAR easier and faster to use these built-in database functions to manipulate data, rather than having to loop through hundreds or thousands of records using traditional VBA routines.

So, because of that type of background, combined with somewhat sparse help provided by Microsoft on Excel’s “database functionality”, I find that many of my contributions involve making recommendations and providing examples regarding this aspect of Excel.

By nature, I enjoy helping others and have done so when possible - long before Tek-Tips arrived. While I do get to spend a lot of work-time hours in helping to resolve Tek-Tips problems, I also find myself using many "off-hours". I'm currently on "vacation", so you can see that this has definitely become somewhat "habit forming". I'll probably have to cut back at some point, as I'll have to resume other activities that I've placed on the "back-burner".

I hope this helps answer your question about "where I'm coming from"

Thanks again for your interest, and your appreciation. Thanks also to Carl.

Regards, ...Dale Watson

HOME: nd.watson@shaw.ca