Please Read, Can this be done?

[jack62]

Ok here's the deal, my company has been bought out by some people wh
have *1* whole whopping year of experience in my related field, whil
we (the former office employees) have a combined experience of ove
*70* years.

The new people KNOW what they are doing and we are all idiots who kno
nothing. Sound right to you???

Anyway here's the deal.

What they do is take orders over the internet. Via Internet explorer
On the main screen you look at it will look something like th
following example:

Order #/ Time it was placed/ Adress of customer
6789 7:15pm 777 This is stupid Dr.
6790 7:22pm 5467 This isn't going to wor
Dr
Etc, etc, etc.........


Now, you may seen anthing from 1- 50 or more orders listed in this wa
on the main screen. Ok?

Now in order to get more detail about the order you actually have t
CLICK on the order #6789 (or whatever # you want to view)
If you click on it it will open the order up. tell you everything th
customer wants, price, how they are paying, Cash or Credit or check
and you are able to ASSIGN a driver to go get the product, and delive
it.

At the end of the night, these people spend an hour or more, MANUALL
clicking every order, MANUALLY Printing every "detailed" page, and the
typing each drivers name into An Excel spreadsheet and comming up with
final tally.

IMHO, (and EXPERIENCE) the computer should do this $%*&^ for you! Yo
should be able to at the very least click on each order, open it up t
the detailed view and then click a few buttons to have the compute
EXPORT that information to EXCEL and have the drivers names, total
owed, and anything else you could possibly want all done automatical
with just a few simple clicks of the mouse.

I'm I crazy? If you don't understand, it's ok, but if you'd like t
take a stab at, go right ahead. Thank you for reading

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Couple of thoughts:

1) I've been in many situations where 70 combined years of experience is
no more valuable than 1 year of experience. Especially 70 years of
disgruntled experience. For that matter, 140 people with 6 months
experience each might be worse. Then again, they might not be.

2) Someone who would write what appears to be a fairly identifiable
complaint in a public forum that's archived forever might in fact
constitute an "idiot who know(s) nothing". Or it could just be someone
blowing off steam. Hard to tell.

3) Yes, "the computer" should probably be doing more of the work.
However, it's hard to know *what* work and *which* computer, because you
seem to think that the data is stored somewhere "via" IE. That's
certainly not the case - there's some sort of database/aggregator in the
system somewhere. There are innumerable ways that a database application
could export data from wherever it's stored to an Excel file. But it's
hard to understand why anyone would use Excel to get a driver's list...

4) Given that, and depending on lots of other considerations, paying
$40/week to have someone type in data may in fact be far more cost
effective than redesigning the system. Wouldn't be my chosen way, but...

5) There's no way I can think of, given the information you've provided,
to "take a stab" at any kind of a solution. And you make it clear that
it would be a waste of time anyway.

 

[jack62]

Gee Mr, thanks for the help..........I's sho' do appreciate it. Um Hm,
sho nuf'.


You's sounds like a real smart man.

You ever heard of this:

"FOAD"?

You's can figures it out I'ms sho'.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Hmmm... not sure why you included the quotes. Was it to indicate that
FOAD was supposed to be figurative or ironic?

In any case, you asked ("Sound right to you???") and I answered honestly
- it sure didn't sound like you knew very much about the system you were
working with. You asked for a way to "export" from IE to XL using a few
clicks of the mouse.

My answer, while not what you wanted to hear, was meant to indicate that
the data undoubtedly *already* exists in a database somewhere. Given
that, there's no reason I can see to generate an XL file manually, when
any database app can generate an XL-readable file without any
intermediate steps, perhaps even generated by a SQL Query from within
XL, or perhaps generated from some other app.

Furthermore, for generating a driver report, unless you need XL to do
real-time calculations, it would be much more efficient to skip XL
entirely and generate the report directly from the DBMS. Such a report
could easily include the daily tally.

So, do you know where the data is stored, and what DBMS is in use?

To answer your previous question:

I'm (sic) I crazy?

No, but you, IMO, are asking entirely the wrong question.

I suppose one might be able to do as you suggest using some sort of
XL-based application that involved nested web queries and a lot of VBA,
but I'm not positive.

Granted, what your brilliant new bosses are doing is akin to trying to
drive a nail with a screwdriver, but what you're suggesting seems to me
to be substituting a box-end wrench for the screwdriver. The wrench
might be an improvement, but neither is a hammer.

 

[Bill Sharpe]

Ok here's the deal, my company has been bought out by some people who
have *1* whole whopping year of experience in my related field, while
we (the former office employees) have a combined experience of over
*70* years.

The new people KNOW what they are doing and we are all idiots who know
nothing. Sound right to you???

Anyway here's the deal.

What they do is take orders over the internet. Via Internet explorer.
On the main screen you look at it will look something like the
following example:

Order #/ Time it was placed/ Adress of customer
6789 7:15pm 777 This is stupid Dr.
6790 7:22pm 5467 This isn't going to work
Dr
Etc, etc, etc.........


Now, you may seen anthing from 1- 50 or more orders listed in this way
on the main screen. Ok?

Now in order to get more detail about the order you actually have to
CLICK on the order #6789 (or whatever # you want to view)
If you click on it it will open the order up. tell you everything the
customer wants, price, how they are paying, Cash or Credit or check,
and you are able to ASSIGN a driver to go get the product, and deliver
it.

At the end of the night, these people spend an hour or more, MANUALLY
clicking every order, MANUALLY Printing every "detailed" page, and then
typing each drivers name into An Excel spreadsheet and comming up with a
final tally.

IMHO, (and EXPERIENCE) the computer should do this $%*&^ for you! You
should be able to at the very least click on each order, open it up to
the detailed view and then click a few buttons to have the computer
EXPORT that information to EXCEL and have the drivers names, total $
owed, and anything else you could possibly want all done automaticaly
with just a few simple clicks of the mouse.

I'm I crazy? If you don't understand, it's ok, but if you'd like to
take a stab at, go right ahead. Thank you for reading.

Of course the operation can be automated, but a lot more information is
needed about where the data really is coming from that's displayed in
IE. Whether Excel is the right program to do the job isn't at all
obvious. Aaron, of course, will chime in and say that it's not. And he
may very well be right!

Bill

 

[Jef Gorbach]

Ok here's the deal, my company has been bought out by some people who
have *1* whole whopping year of experience in my related field, while
we (the former office employees) have a combined experience of over
*70* years.

The new people KNOW what they are doing and we are all idiots who know
nothing. Sound right to you???

Anyway here's the deal.

What they do is take orders over the internet. Via Internet explorer.
On the main screen you look at it will look something like the
following example:

Order #/ Time it was placed/ Adress of customer
6789 7:15pm 777 This is stupid Dr.
6790 7:22pm 5467 This isn't going to work
Dr
Etc, etc, etc.........


Now, you may seen anthing from 1- 50 or more orders listed in this way
on the main screen. Ok?

Now in order to get more detail about the order you actually have to
CLICK on the order #6789 (or whatever # you want to view)
If you click on it it will open the order up. tell you everything the
customer wants, price, how they are paying, Cash or Credit or check,
and you are able to ASSIGN a driver to go get the product, and deliver
it.

At the end of the night, these people spend an hour or more, MANUALLY
clicking every order, MANUALLY Printing every "detailed" page, and then
typing each drivers name into An Excel spreadsheet and comming up with a
final tally.

IMHO, (and EXPERIENCE) the computer should do this $%*&^ for you! You
should be able to at the very least click on each order, open it up to
the detailed view and then click a few buttons to have the computer
EXPORT that information to EXCEL and have the drivers names, total $
owed, and anything else you could possibly want all done automaticaly
with just a few simple clicks of the mouse.

I'm I crazy? If you don't understand, it's ok, but if you'd like to
take a stab at, go right ahead. Thank you for reading.

You're correct in stating your users are doing it the hard way because IE is
merely displaying information stored within an actual database somewhere,
and while you could generate the desired reports via Excel/VBA, the
underlying database should be able to generate the desire report(s) much
easier/faster then doing so via Excel/VBA.
Most likely, your IT Dept already has the reports setup and doesnt know
someone along the chain-of-command forgot to mention them to the end-users;
who've resorted to doing it the hardest way possible.

 

[Jack Marks]

I, in my wisdom, conclude that this is nonsense. Of course he can export
the data into Excel. I know. I am doing it. I have one group of
people scheduling appointments. And I have another group of people READING
ONLY the scheduled appointments, but adding, in THEIR excel spreadsheet, the
results of the appointments. So I wrote 2 macros, in VBA, which I write in
what I call Gutter Visual Basic. Not elegant, but it gets the job done,
and does not cost anything.

The first macro creates the appointment schedule, one month at a time, for
the schedulers to put people in.
The second macro operates on a "results" sheet. This macro reads the names
on the first sheet and, if the name is not there already, adds it, so that
upon update I have a sheet with a place to put all the results. It works
very slick.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I, in my wisdom, conclude that this is nonsense. Of course he can export
the data into Excel. I know. I am doing it.

Of course one could use XL/VBA for this - I suggested a possible path.
My point was that his company *shouldn't* use XL.

The OP's data exists in a database somewhere. Creating reports is what
database applications do exceedingly well.

The OP didn't seem to have the knowledge base to write even "gutter
VBA". If you've managed to drive your nail with a screwdriver,
congratulations - I've done the same thing many times. But the only
reason I can see to use XL as an appointment book application is that
you didn't have a database tool available, or didn't want to spend the
time to learn/implement it. That can be a perfectly rational decision,
especially for small organizations with one person who's knowledgeable
*and* isn't likely to leave. With your organization, should you leave, I
suspect the first time something needs to change, the whole system is at
risk to break down (again, that can be an acceptable risk, especially if
you're the principal).

Since the OP isn't going to be solving anything himself, however, it
makes much more sense for his organization to use the right tool,
especially since they already have it.