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I tried OpenOffice many years ago. It could do few things back then, but I immediately dismissed as inadequate for my needs. I have always been a fan of what VBA could do for Excel.

Last week, I completed the most complex piece of VBA application I’d ever written. I am a VBA newbie and it took me a week  to finish my code that could be printed on 28 A4 pages. My spreadsheet till date works flawlessly on XP/Office 2003 like it is supposed to, but I wrote most of my code in Vista/Office 2007.

When I upgraded to Debian Squeeze, Openoffice.org 3.1.1 came with it. I checked out the new version and was impressed that one could write macros in Python, Javascript, BeanShell in addition to BASIC.

I tried to open my most complex piece of VBA code in Openoffice.org and I was bombarded with hundreds of repetitive error messages that I had to kill the spreadsheet from the command line. I was convinced that VBA and OOoCalc are not compatible, till I discovered this site by accident when trying to learn to write Javascript Macros in OOo.

OK. All I needed to add was “Option VBA Support 1″. That didn’t sound too difficult, so I tried opening my spreadsheet  again and had to again kill everything from command line.

Some thing was not right and I wasn’t being able to run VBA despite the promised compatibility.

So I decided to go slow. No matter how many times, I couldn’t run the macros when I opened the native excel file. So I decided to open the excel file with macros disabled. That let me open the spreadsheet, but nothing was working. I found that OOoCalc automatically had added “Option VBA Support 1″ to my modules.

I saved the file as .ODS and proceeded to debug by enabling macros again. This time, errors didn’t come in a flood.They came one at a time and it was easier to debug.

The first set of errors related to variables which did not have an explicit Dim statement. VBA in Excel seemed more forgiving in handling varaibles without proper Dim statements. But OOo Calc didn’t like it. So I ended up adding a few Dim statements for some variables.

The next set of errors was with Excel UDF names. OOo Calc likes to see Functions being invoked with uppercase letters. So if you’d used lower case letters in Excel, they would show up as errors. This could be easily fixed by use of find and replace feature.

With just these two things, fixed my new .ODS file worked perfectly. I then saved it as .xls and re-opened the .xls and everything was still working. Though OOo Calc  documentation still says that not all VBA features are supported, VBA runs well on OOoCalc for all practical engineering calculations. So now is the time for me to make the switch.

Now if you have difficulties, in getting  your VBA code to work  in OOo Calc, dont give up soon.

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Later, I found out that I could not login into WordPress as an administrator. Everything else seemed to be working fine. Site was up and running as usual, but I couldn’t access my dashboard.

When I checked the WordPress database through phpMyAdmin the wp_options table was perfect. I was soon able to figure out that this was not a WordPress problem.

So I started troubleshooting by trying to undo my last set of actions, one of which was upgrading the wp-hive plugin. Renaming the wp-hive folder gave an serious error and brought the site down. With that I was able to narrow down the problem to the file

/wp-contents/db.php

I remmed out the line

/*require_once( WP_CONTENT_DIR . ‘/plugins/wp-hive/do-prefix.php’);
*/

Everything is back to normal for me now because I dont use wp-hive.

I didn’t find anything about this problem in Google, so I decided to write this down.

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For months, I have searched and tried out several portable applications for Windows. None of them even came close to LiberKey in terms of the range, stability and upgrades.

I’ve used LiberKey from the same USB device on both XP and Vista machines with equal ease. You can update LiberKey on XP machine and run it on Vista and viceversa. In fact, I’ve copied LiberKey onto my “C:\Program Files” on Windows drives and I enjoy free updates of all my open source applications.

What was a good Windows solution, has now proven to be a good Linux solution too.

Today, I tried out several LiberKey applications on Debian through the Wine interface and most of them seemed to be working well. The only fall back is that these applications dont work through the Liberkey interface. But rather each application needs to be run from its folder manually. This is not a set back  as all it takes is a link to a application to open it.

Debian users sure wont have to miss their little windows programs on GNOME or KDE.

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Let us say each product type has varying number of sub-types:

• Two different types of cakes: Cake A, Cake B
• Four different types of drinks : Drink A, Drink B, Drink C, Drink D
• Three different types of Chocolates : Chocolate A, Chocolate B, Chocolate C

Let us say we need to give the user two comboboxes, one to select the product type and one to select the product sub-type. In such a case,  the choices and number of choices displayed in the sub-type combobox will depend on the users choice of product type.

Macros can be used change one combobox based on the selection in another.

Let us start by setting up the first combobox.

• Type values Cakes, Drinks and Chocolates in cells H4:H6.
• Draw a combobox whose name is say Drop Down1
• Right click the combobox. Select Format Control. Set the combobox to take inputs from range H4:H6 and return selection to H.

Let us next create the second combobox whose name is Drop Down 2. This combobox is still empty. To fill up this combobox we need four macros.

• First macro menu_cakes fills the combobox if the user selects cakes.
• Second macro menu_drinks fills the combobox if the user selects  drinks.
• Third macro menu_chocolates fills the combobox if the user selects chocolates.
• Fourth macro menu_product_selector decides which of these macros should be used depending on users selection.

Let us start creating these macros in the VBA editor.

• Start the editor by pressing (Alt+F11).
• Select Insert – > Module
• Type in the code for the macros

Sub menu_cakes()
ActiveSheet.Shapes(“Drop Down 2″).Select
With Selection
.ListFillRange = “$J$4:$J$5″
.LinkedCell = “$J$2″
.DropDownLines = 2
.Display3DShading = False
End With
Range(“A1″).Select
End Sub

Sub menu_drinks()
ActiveSheet.Shapes(“Drop Down 2″).Select
With Selection
.ListFillRange = “$K$4:$K$7″
.LinkedCell = “$K$2″
.DropDownLines = 4
.Display3DShading = False
End With
Range(“A1″).Select
End Sub

Sub menu_chocolates()
ActiveSheet.Shapes(“Drop Down 2″).Select
With Selection
.ListFillRange = “$L$4:$L$5″
.LinkedCell = “$L$2″
.DropDownLines = 3
.Display3DShading = False
End With
Range(“A1″).Select
End Sub

Sub menu_product_selector()
Dim n As Integer
n = Range(“H2″).Value
‘This is where the user input is taken into account
Select Case n
Case 1
Call menu_cakes
Case 2
Call menu_drinks
Case 3
Call menu_chocolates
Case Else
MsgBox “Error is selecting product from Menu”
End Select
End Sub

The last part is to tie-all these macros for execution.

We do this by right clicking on the product type combobox (Drop Down 1), selecting Assign Macro and asking it to run the macro menu_product_selector. This way every time the user makes a selection on this menu, it will invoke the macro menu_product_selector which in turn will invoke other macros that control the second combobox.

One assumption made is that all combobox objects will be on the activesheet. It is not a bad assumption to make as the user would definitely be present on the worksheet containing the comboboxes to make a selection.

Is there a better way of doing this?

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If you have a spreadsheet that has multiple macros, it is possible to invoke one from the other. You need to use the statement “call [name of macro to be called]” each time you want a particular macro to be called.

eg: Body of macro0 could contain following code to invoke other macros

if x=1
call macro1
else if x=2
call macro2
else
call macro3
endif

*Edited later*

This applies only to Macros and it does not seem to be possible to invoke macros using the call function from user defined functions.

Howto: Add buttons, checkboxes, comboboxes in Excel2007

Office 2003 had “Forms toolbar” that contained all the objects like buttons, checkboxes, comboboxes etc.

In Office 2007, this functionality has been moved to the Developer tab. You have to manually enable the Developer tab in the ribbon bar as follows.

• Click on the oversized Office logo button in the upper left corner
• Click on the Excel Options button to display the Excel Options dialog
• Click on Popular in the list in the left hand side of the dialog.
• Check ‘Show Developer tab in the Ribbon’
• Click the OK button.

In the Developer tab now should appear in the Ribbon bar. If you open the developer tab, you can find the Controls section which has a drop-down menu labeled Insert where the form and ActiveX controls are placed.

Howto: Change values of individual cells through macros

To store number 3 in cell F3, use the following command in the body of the macro:

Range(“F3″).Value = 3

This would place the value 3 into cell F3 of the active worksheet of the active workbook.

To place the value in another workbook use the following command.

Workbooks(“BookName”).Worksheets(“SheetName”).Range(“F3″).Value = 3

The .Value property can also read a value from a cell.

x = Range(“F3″).Value

Whether .Value property is used to read a value or assign a value depends on which side of the equal sign it is placed.

However, this applies only to Macros and not user defined functions. Though  it is possible to read a value to a user defined function and it does not seem to be possible to assign a value to a cell.

Public  Function MyFunc(MacroName As String)
     Dim Msg, Style, Title, Help, Ctxt, Response, MyString
\r\nMsg = \"Do you want to continue ?\"    ' Define message.
\r\nStyle = vbYesNo + vbCritical + vbDefaultButton2    ' Define buttons.
\r\nTitle = \"MsgBox Demonstration\"    ' Define title.
\r\nHelp = \"DEMO.HLP\"    ' Define Help file.
\r\nCtxt = 1000    ' Define topic
\r\n        ' context.
\r\n        ' Display message.
\r\nResponse = MsgBox(Msg, Style, Title, Help, Ctxt)
\r\nIf Response = vbYes Then    ' User chose Yes.
\r\n    MyString = \"Yes\"    ' Perform some action.
\r\nElse    ' User chose No.
\r\n    MyString = \"No\"    ' Perform some action.
\r\nEnd If

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Today, I was able to do the same thing with the help of a new module called disk-manage on Debian Lenny and Gnome.

Disk-manager detects, mount new unmounted partitions, including NTFS-partitions in real time without requiring a reboot. Disk-manager  can be also used to set mount point for the partitions.

To install disk-manager:

# apt-get install disk-manager

To start disk-manager

System->Administration->Disk Manager

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X authorisation for the superuser seems to be an issue that has been discussed several times. There is a sux command which is technically “su+x authorisation”. I didn’t know about the sux command so I took the longer route:

1. open a console and login as ROOT : su

2. see who can launch an “X program” : xauth list
if you get an error or the list is empty(you dont get anything) then continue to read on-probably this is you solution.

3. open a console and as USER see who is authorized to open the X programs : xauth list
This should give you something like this :
desktop/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 395a5228d995d958a0cc59a5afe9d521
193.5.93.21:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 45891337dd1f30ea26f45bb6b70449b0
desktop:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 370116e6e873fc798aa4f1429f536219

4. now as ROOT add the ones (hostnames) you want to be able to launch X programs on your DISPLAY :

xauth add desktop/unix:0 . 395a5228d995d958a0cc59a5afe9d521

Do the same for the other entries as well(if you want to be able to launch from other hosts too-try adding all if you dont know which one is the correct one).Notice that the long numbers at the end are the same with the users before!ALSO NOTICE THE DOT “.” between the “desktop/unix:0″ and the number. Now you should be ok.Try to launch the program as ROOT. Should work

Source  : http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-166863.html

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I made a second attempt today and succeeded. Briefly, this is what happened.

18:45 hrs
I pop in the Debian 5.03 DVD 1 and start a vanilla install of Lenny with GNOME.
20:35 hrs
Debian Lenny  installation completes.
20:40 hrs
I edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to change all instances of “lenny” to “squeeze” and all instances of “.in” to “.us”. This is the only preparatory step required. Nothing else is necessary as the entire squeeze installation happens by a download.
20.41 hrs
I use the update manager to check for updates. Smart Upgrade feature  identifies 1101 packages adding to 881 MB.
20:42 hrs
I begin to download the squeeze upgrades on my 512 KBPS connection
12:58 hrs
All 1101 package downloads complete and squeeze installation starts. Thankfully, I didn’t lose power this time.
01:25 hrs
Installation freezes when attempting to restart the hardware abstraction layer.
01:27 hrs
After waiting for two minutes, I press Enter a few times and Ctrl+c a few times. Disk whirls and installation continues.
01:35 hrs
Installation completes. Update Manager throws out a long list of dependency problems reproduced below. PC freezes again and wont power down.
01:36 hrs
I manually power down the machine, wondering if the upgrade worked
01:38 hrs
When I boot, I notice that the Vanilla installation of Squeeze is near perfect. Everything works flawlessly.

The addition of  multimedia drivers, third party software etc. are for another day.

————————————————————-
Dependency problems during a normal squeeze install.
————————————————————-
E: dbus: subprocess installed post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)
E: dbus-x11: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: gconf2-common: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgconf2-4: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: gconf2: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnomevfs2-common: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnomevfs2-0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnomevfs2-extra: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libedataserver1.2-11: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libcamel1.2-14: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libebook1.2-9: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libecal1.2-7: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-evolution: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnome2-common: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: gvfs: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnome2-0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libbonoboui2-0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnomeui-0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libpanel-applet2-0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-gnomeapplet: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnome-desktop-2-11: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-gnomedesktop: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: gnome-media-common: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgnome-media0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-mediaprofiles: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: metacity-common: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libmetacity-private0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-metacity: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libtotem-plparser12: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-totem-plparser: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-gnome2-desktop: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-gconf: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: python-gnome2: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: consolekit: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: policykit: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: hal: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-core: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-input-kbd: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libebackend1.2-0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libedata-book1.2-2: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libedata-cal1.2-6: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libegroupwise1.2-13: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libsoup-gnome2.4-1: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgweather-common: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgweather1: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libedataserverui1.2-8: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libexchange-storage1.2-3: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgtkhtml3.14-19: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: libgtkhtml-editor0: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
E: evolution-data-server: dependency problems – leaving unconfigured

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GNOME has an elegant solution for this. Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions and here you can add a list of programs you want to start with every session.

*Edited later*

In KDE4 there is a similar choice in Control center -> autostart.

If you are using KDE 3.5, which comes with Debian Lenny as a default, you will need to add the program manually to ~/.kde/Autostart

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