Spreadsheet Models for Managers


Getting Access to Spreadsheet Models for Managers


If Spreadsheet Models for Managersyou use Excel to model businesses, business processes, or business transactions, this course will change your life. You’ll learn how to create tools for yourself that will amaze even you. Unrestricted use of this material is available in two ways.

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Spreadsheet Models for Managers

Session 13 Home Page
Using Macros I

Macros, usually seen as a technical element of any spreadsheet model, are also an important tool of the manager. By encapsulating commonly used techniques in a macro, the manager assures that every time that technique is used, it’s used in exactly the same way. This is the most valuable attribute of any macro — it increases the reliability of the models that use it.

A second advantage, of course, is decreased development cost. Once you have the macro, using it is as easy as using any Excel worksheet function. All intermediate forms are subsumed into the macro. While the costs of any models that use the macro decline, the organization does have to build and maintain the macro, and that isn’t free. So choose wisely those clichés that you capture in macro form.

In this session, you’ll build a few simple macros. The goal of this session is to introduce you to some of the issues that arise for a macro writer. As a manager, you’ll benefit from some appreciation of those issues — you’ll be better able to manage macro writers, and you’ll have a better feel for what the trade-offs are.

Below is a summary of the materials for Session 13.

Last Modified: Wednesday, 27-Apr-2016 04:15:26 EDT

Function Macros

We focus on function macros in this course because they’re more likely than command macros to make a real difference in your facility with constructing models. For instance, when your customer wants to see result streams displayed as [Month1, Month2, Month3, Q1 Total, Month4, Month5, Month6, Q2 Total, …], you probably realize that such a layout makes copy/paste and fill very inconvenient. A macro can provide a simple means of producing the preferred layout from a more easily maintained pure month structure. It’s also easy to construct macros for running sums and running differences. Can you think of other applications for function macros that make your models easier to build and maintain?