Using "Get External Data"

  • Thread starter Thread starter gifer
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gifer

Hi,

I have been using the "get external data" utility for a few years now where
I work. I go out to a data site with refresh every 5 minutes. I retain the
data in adjacent cells one after another to produce a trend line. I do this
for a 12 hour duration to show production output progress. It works well at
local PCs running an independent file; same file, just running on different
computers.

A couple times a day, management gathers in a conference room to review the
daily production status. The computer that is in that conference room, is
off and on, and used for different (unrelated) meetings throughout the day.
So, I can't keep it running to retain data and/or update every five minutes.

When I use that conference room for these production up-dates, I wondered if
there is a way to share the file that is running back at my desk, so that
when I open excel and launch the file on the conf. rm. PC, the trend line is
"up-to-date" using the data from my PC. The problem I have ran into when I
try this, is when I "share" the file at my desk, so the conf. rm. PC can
open it, the external data retrieval is disabled; grayed out... which makes
the program useless.

I don't know much about databases, but there may be a way to use the file at
my desk, to keep an additional database populated for the twelve hours, and
then just reference that data from any PC and be able to see progress
throughout the day. Does anyone know how to start thinking about this--
maybe MS Access or some other excel twist that I don't know about? I'm
probably not using the appropriate software to do what I am trying to do...
with limited budgets and so on, this sort of works for me... but let me know
if there are other tools or s/w I should look into.

Thanks,

John
 
John,

I know there are no quickly available guidelines for these newsgroups
(unless one knows where they are), but you should not post to more than one
group. It causes fragmentation of replies, and redundant effort on the part
of responders.

Probably the easiest way is to have a separate workbook for the conference
room, with links to yours. Yours has been running, gethering data. It can
have stopped and closed (if the data gathering period has ended), as long as
it has saved. Yours should save each time it has gathered more data, since
that's what the conference room workbook is linked to.

Another possibility is to keep yours running and gathering data, and saving
the workbook each time it's updated itself. Now the conference room folks
can open it, read-only, since you have it open. The conference room will
get the data as it existed when it was opened; it would be a starting point.
It could also go out and gather additional data from the site, or not,
depending on their needs. This means you have to have saved it to a network
drive accessible to the conference room computer.
 
Try creating a DB in Access and under the tables tab use the menu file/get
external data/link tables.
 
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