05-01 chapter-2---1-introduction-to-manipulations
chapter 2 - 1, introduction to manipulations​
This chapter will focus on the actual work of using Ranges for some purpose. This chapter is predicated on the previous one which focused on obtained a Range. When talking of "using" a Range, the goal usually takes one of the following forms.
Work through a spreadsheet of data, processing it from one format into another. This can be to pull data out, do calculations on a subset of data, change the formatting, aggregate data, summarize data into a new spreadsheet, etc. The options here are really endless, but the main idea is that you have an existing spreadsheet of data to do something with.
The next category of work is to process some small amount of data in place, typically to clean up data or convert it to some other form. A lot of this type of work is providing some functionality that would be great to have in Excel by default. This work also includes a lot of very specific types of functions that only make sense with your data. In that sense, these types of actions can be the quickest hitters; they are specific to your task and easy to program.
Another category of work is to run through an existing worksheet and perform some amount of checking on it. These checks do not necessarily need to modify the spreadsheet, they can be checking for formula errors, bad values, etc.
Another type of work that can be done is to modify the spreadsheet to make it easier to do work or to manage a workflow. These types of things are often implemented as events, but they can just be stray macros as well. When modifying the spreadsheet, you are often showing/hiding columns or worksheets. You can also be sorting Worksheets. You might be moving some number of Worksheets over from a "template" and setting up a common work environment.
As we progress down this list, things are becoming increasingly complicated. At some point, the work involved will progress from a couple of simple tasks to a much more involved workflow. It's generally the nature of a complicated workflow that it is simply doing a long string of simple tasks in series. In that sense, if you can learn these techniques, you can start to become comfortable combining them in more complicated fashions.