Forum Discussion
Advanced Formula Environment (AFE) feedback
I tried this new feature for the first time yesterday and really love it. It takes a little while to set it up how I want it, but the potential to simplify really complex concepts is immense.
Based on my limited experience I have only been able to identify two ways of applying the work to other sheets, either by saving an xlst template or creating a GitHub Gist to import from.
I am comfortable doing either of those myself, but ideally I want to share the work with my colleagues who are less open to new concepts. Two things that I think would benefit this feature:
- The ability to save these modules into a personal workbook for application in any sheet open on my machine (similar to VBA).
- The ability to export and re-import the module so that a colleague could replicate without the need for a lengthy set of instructions
Thank you for bringing this to Beta!!
8 Replies
As a comment, how this suggestion could work with Excel for web?
In general it's better to make such feature requests at Issues 路 microsoft/advanced-formula-environment (github.com) or at least on Issues 路 microsoft/Excel-Labs (github.com) . Perhaps something similar has been opened already, didn't check.
- Thank you for the link, I had seen direction to post in GitHub but it wasn't obvious to me which was the relevant section from the main page. This is exactly what I was looking for.
It seems that the suggestion has already been made too 馃榾
https://github.com/microsoft/advanced-formula-environment/issues/53I've seen your feedback on GitHub, thanks for the update. In general, if you are not sure, you may open new issue, Jack will combine it with existing one if he finds the similarity.
Please take into account, 1) AFE works on any Excel 365 version (includes Excel for web), 2) AFE is not part of the Excel, it's Microsoft Garage project. Thus we shall not expect the same level of support and compatibility as for the main Excel. We use it on our own till the project exists.
- If you are referring to LAMBDA names, a simple way to distribute them is to have a worksheet that uses each of them. Then all it takes is copying the cell(s) with the lambda(s) the other workbook needs.
I am and although that will work, that is still a workaround which offers little benefit beyond what you get from creating an xlst template file to start from.
The suggestion was really to have a simple way to distribute/set this up for multiple individuals in whichever sheet they are using. That is especially important on files that come from an external source and you are not starting from scratch.
- It would be quite simple to have one workbook with all your Lambdas in a central location for everyone to access, with some simple VBA code to ease the process of copying the one(s) the user needs to his/her workbook. Or to write an add-in which checks each workbook as it is opened for presence of a pre-defined set of lambda names. The AFE cannot do that as it is an office-js add-in, which only works on one workbook and has no knowledge of other workbooks open in Excel.
