OVERVIEW
This product provides the ability to extract data and formulae from Excel spreadsheets without the need to open the spreadsheets using Excel. It is accessed using simple function calls from within Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications and provides the ability to scan spreadsheets even whilst they are open and in use.
Values or formulae can be extracted from multiple spreadsheets simultaneously. Selections are made using standard Excel references or named ranges. The extraction process can be performed both synchronously or asynchronously. The latter is particularly useful when large volumes of data require extracting. The data itself can be returned as a Variant array or as an ADO Recordset.
The product interface is in the form of a COM object which allows the user to define one or more Selector objects. Each Selector object is composed of one or more File objects, each of which refers to a specific Excel spreadsheet file. Each File object in turn is composed of one or more Reference objects. Each Reference object details a specific area within the selected from which either data values or formulae are to be extracted.
The properties (and therefore the data extraction criteria) of each File object or the complete Selector object itself can be read from or written to an external text file. This allows the configuration of all of the objects to be saved, loaded and edited easily.