I ordered my free VS beta 2 on April 19th, my order status is now back ordered. If you’re still interested and haven’t ordered, get in the pool before they quit or the wait is 6 months.
Also, according to this link, VSTO beta 2 is included with Visual Studio 2005 Team System , which is what I think I ordered (my “bill” says Team Suite), so If you wanted to get a copy of VSTO I think that’s your ticket.
This is a popular Excel link lately: Slacker Manager / Make a Calendar in Excel
J-walk had another over here.
And my favorite (for the addin option): Calendar Picker Addin (I still haven’t sat down to figure out how he made the icon in the cell)
I have no idea what future versions of Office have in store, however I wouldn’t be suprised if .Net is part of them.
If you are interested in getting your feet wet with .Net for free (at least that’s my plans), Microsoft is giving away Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2.
“Free shipping and handling on U.S. and Canadian orders, while supplies last.”
I almost ordered the Beta 1 Visual Studio, however the 10$ shipping for a DVD made me wait. Thanks to whomever came up with the free offer! (Perfect would have been a download 
I wonder if VSTO comes with it?
Usually I recommend people to the Newsgroups or a forum for Excel questions, however it looks like Jim didn’t have any luck there, so I’ll post the question here for him (also because I was delayed in responding).
Jim, I don’t have any experience with your issue, hopefully a passerby might. And the question:
“My application calls for Application.WindowState=xlMaximized at Open. For some users, however, it does not execute. Moreover, when they run procedures that Unprotect then Protect the WB (to make some forms visible and hide some) Excel quits. I wrote the application in Excel 97 and also use it in Excel XP, but I have never encountered this problem myself. Yet, for the 5% of my users that do encounter it, it’s frustrating. Is there a work around procedure I can write? Or a third-party utility I can recommend to fix their problem? Do you have any idea why they might encounter this problem? Please help me get a handle on this problem if you can. Thank you in advance.”
I’ve started my 5th week on the Couch-to-5K Running Plan this week, and while surfing the local running sites I stumbled on this
Excel Running Log.
It includes logging, calculations, graphs, and more; and even a graph that shows your cumulative mileage vs. circling the globe or going to the moon.
I’ll wait until I’m done with the program to use this since I’m already logging my efforts, however I wanted to bookmark the template for myself and others that may be interested.
Fadi from Excel pragma has an interest in Excel XML and has added an XML category to his blog. Nice.
I found the article Creating XML Mappings in Excel 2003 from one of his posts. I particularly liked the Mapping Scenarios section.
I’m leaving for MI and won’t be posting again until sometime next week. If you’ve stopped by in the hiatus you can find plenty of new Excel content by checking out one of these sites.
I also wanted leave a quick trackback for ResearchBuzz who was disappointed the Yahoo local only worked in Excel 2003: Juan Pablo Gonz
J-walk posted about a tool that exports the results from Yahoo local search as CSV.
Here’s an alternative that uses Excel to retrieve the results from the Yahoo Local API. The solution requires Excel 2003 because it uses XML and lists.
(aside, you can use all of the Yahoo API’s in Excel 2003, here’s the Image Search In Excel)
Yahoo Local Search In Excel
Enter a query term, zip code, and radius, and the spreadsheet returns the Yahoo local results for the query. Download Excel Local Search Sreadsheet
UPDATE I removed the Radius Field from the spreadsheet. According to Yahoo’s documentation, it doesn’t work with zip code. I also created a zipcode fix to keep excel from dropping the zeros on zipcodes that start with a zero. Many Thanks for testing Jordan.
Update 2 Daily Dose of Excel posted a version that works with versions of Excel prior to 2003
I missed this a few days ago, there was an Office April Fools joke at ExtremeTech – Erotica Found Within Microsoft Office Install
A couple of ideas for Excel junkies that also store their website in a MYSQL database.
Aside: You can export MYSQL data as XML by simply clicking the XML button on export (using PHPMYADMIN).
Idea 1
John Mansfield posted PHP code for Tracking the Googlebot awhile back. Why not write this data to a my MYSQL database instead of getting hundreds of emails. Next, export XML from the MYSQL database, then import that data to Excel and really get a good picture of what the googlebot (or any bot) is doing over time?
Idea 2
Similar to Idea 1, instead this time record a user’s IP, Referrer, and URL they land on (help), then write to MYSQL. Next, export XML from the MYSQL database, then import the data to Excel and I should be able to get a clear picture of where any visitor goes on this site, in what order, how long at each page, etc. and all in nice charts if desired.
Idea 3
Instead of Exporting the data from the first 2 ideas, create a REST interface that exposes the MYSQL databases for anyone to consume, Excel app or not.
I haven’t tried any of them yet.
Tom | 
04 21st, 2005| 
