Wednesday, January 7, 2015

How to import data from one Excel spreadsheet to another using VBA

It can be very helpful knowing how to import data from one Excel spreadsheet to another using VBA. In fact, one of the new features I added to my College Football Bowl Prediction spreadsheet is the ability to import a user’s picks from a separate entry form into the pool manager’s tracking sheet automatically. I did this by inserting a button in the manager’s file that is linked to a VBA macro. If you're brand new to programming macros in Excel, please see my getting started guide here.

How to import data from one Excel spreadsheet to another using VBA

The import spreadsheet VBA code is below. The comments colored green explain what is going on. This code is pretty quick and dirty - no real error handling has been inserted to deal with unexpected situations, something that should be added.

'this code imports a single player's picks into the pool manager
'player's picks must be saved as .xls file
'==============================================================
Sub Import_Single_Player_Data()
' Get player's workbook...
Dim customerBook As Workbook
Dim filter As String
Dim caption As String
Dim customerFilename As String
Dim customerWorkbook As Workbook
Dim targetWorkbook As Workbook
' make weak assumption that active workbook is the target
Set targetWorkbook = Application.ActiveWorkbook
' get the customer workbook
filter = " *.xls,*.xls"
caption = "Please Select an input file "
customerFilename = Application.GetOpenFilename(filter, , caption)
Set customerWorkbook = Application.Workbooks.Open(customerFilename)
'define the target sheets in order to copy data from customer to target workbook
Dim targetSheet As Worksheet
Set targetSheet = targetWorkbook.Worksheets(2)
Dim sourceSheet As Worksheet
Set sourceSheet = customerWorkbook.Worksheets(1)
'select and copy column L from the new player's spreadsheet
sourceSheet.Columns("L:L").Select
Selection.Copy
'active the pool manager spreadsheet
targetSheet.Activate
'select location where the copied column will be inserted
Columns("L:L").Select
'insert the new column and shift all others to the right
Selection.Insert Shift:=xlToRight
 
' Close customer workbook
customerWorkbook.Close
End Sub

See how this import spreadsheet macro works by downloading the bowl pool manager template. As I’ve stated earlier, using my completed templates is a great way to figure out how to do things that can be applied to other tasks.

By the way, I copied the code into this blog post with formatting by using Notepad++, one of the programming tools I use everyday.

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-Nick