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Comment by caffeine | Hacker News Reader

Feature Idea: Compile to "Vlookup" or compile to VBA.

In other words: I build a spreadsheet with QueryCell, but I want people who don't have QueryCell to be able to use it.

So I hit "Compile", and the program generates standard formulas using hlookup/vlookup and/or VBA so that the spreadsheet works for those who don't have the Plugin. (Of course it adds a link to "Built with QueryCell" :)

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Thanks for the idea caffeine.

I don't quite follow though. To use querycell you load a normal Excel file into Excel. You can then open the QueryCell pane to query the regions of data in the open worksheet/workbooks.

The result sets returned from queries are then added to a new 'resultset' worksheet.

So as it stands you can pass around spreadsheets you have used with QueryCell to people without QueryCell.

Let me know if I misunderstand.

Cheers

No offense but if you're not currently implementing this the way the guy suggested you can make the product a ton better if you take his suggestion (I'm guessing you yourself aren't a power user, again no offense intended).

It sounds like what you're doing is generating a new worksheet and populating it with (static) data generated by running the user's SQL query.

This is fine for sharing static data but b/c you're apparently not using excel formulas in generating the 'resultset' worksheet (it's just raw data, again) the 'resultset' sheets aren't going to be auto-updating if the underlying data got changed (on the 'sourcedata' worksheet, if you follow).

If you can compile SQL queries into excel formulas that'll stay updated as data change this goes from an A to A+ produce.

You should start by looking at the documentation for Vlookup and Hlookup, as those are the built-in functions people use to (fake) selection.

Yep, exactly what I meant. Thanks for explaining it better.

Thanks caffeine and frig.

I now understand what you is being suggested.

Yes it's true, that is not how QueryCell currently works.

I will have a think about this idea. My first impression is that it would be quite complicated to implement and get right but very powerful if done well.

Thanks Guys.

Another idea - viral marketing. You should at the bare minimum add a link in a cell under the result set so that the user who gets the result set created with QueryCell will know about it. You might consider a special landing page for those links

Thanks again Amir, I appreciate all your ideas.

What do you think about this : http://www.querycell.com/captionMe.html

I need help with my Comic Ad.

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