Solution Saturday #4: Using Excel On A Mobile Device
Hello My Friends,
In this #SolutionSaturday our Question comes from Larry Duffie who asks “I wonder about is using some of these applications or creating ones for a mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone”
That’s a great question Larry and thanks for asking. As you know most of the work we do is with macros and while macro-enabled workbooks may not be able to be used in the near future, we still have a lot of ways that we can use our workbooks in phones and tablets.
Firstly, Excel does a great job with entering and storing data, so that users away from their computer can always enter information into Excel from anywhere they are. While in itself it may not be that powerful but when we combine that with a macro enabled workbook in the office along with a shared folder such as DropBox, the combination can be super powerful.
For example we can build macro-enabled workbooks that pull information from any and all shared folders if properly configured. Users away from the office, on their phones can simply enter the data and save it. The Main (or Master Application) can both Pull the data from the workbook and also PUSH Data back into the workbook or a new workbook.
Let’s use a real-world scenario for this. Lest assume we are a field service company and we have service technicians all over the world. We can take new orders with our Main Application and push basic Work Orders out to the individual employees via basic Excel Workbooks (without macros). The field staff can then enter work done, parts used, and time spent on the job and save their file.
The main application would then pull this data from their shared folder and into the main application, and remove the completed work order from their application.
This is just one of many types of Push/Pull scenarios that take advantage of Excel’s power on a mobile phone or table, even without macros. I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of more possibilities.
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this, and thanks again for the great question Larry
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