Excel 2003 Programming: A Developer's Notebook

Kick-Start Lists and XML

To see how Excel’s list and XML features work, start Excel and follow these steps:

1. Choose File → Open, type http:// http://www.mstrainingkits.com/Excel/ExcelObjects.xml , and click OK. Excel asks you how you want to open the file (Figure 1-3).

   

   Figure 1-3. Opening an XML file in Excel

2. Choose Use the XML Source task pane and click OK. As shown in Figure 1-4, Excel asks if it’s OK to create a schema.

   

   Figure 1-4. Excel offers to do some work for you

3. Click OK, and Excel reads the XML file and generates a view of the data it contains in the XML Source task pane, like that in Figure 1-5.

4. Drag these elements from the object folder to adjacent cells in a row: introduced, topic, name, and docString. Excel creates a list on the worksheet (Figure 1-6).

   

   Figure 1-5. The XML Source task pane in Excel

   

   Figure 1-6. An XML-based worksheet list in Excel

5. Choose Data → XML → Refresh XML Data. Excel downloads the list of Excel VBA objects from the file.

6. Click the introduced column heading and select 2003 from the drop-down list. Excel filters the list to display only the new objects ( ...