Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Use Lists

Lists reflect a range of cells within a workbook, rather than the entire workbook file itself. By sharing only the germane range of cells, you avoid publishing the underlying data and macros, which protects the original. The shared list can then be included in different workbooks used by others.

The main limitation of lists is that they can be shared only through Windows Server 2003 running SharePoint Services. That’s because the sharing and maintenance of lists is provided through the ASP.NET Active Server Pages and Web Services that SharePoint provides. Other types of network shares are simply not supported. Another less important hitch is that you can’t include a shared list in a shared workbook. If you want to add a list to a shared workbook, you first need to convert the workbook to single-user.

If you don’t have a Windows 2003 server at your site, you can try out SharePoint Services through a hosting provider, such as Apptix or Verio. Check out http://www.sharepointtrial.com for a free trial.

When a list is published, SharePoint Services creates an Active Server Page that teammates can use to view or modify the list’s data, as shown in Figure 14-2.

SharePoint Services stores lists as XML files. Each list has two different sorts of XML: XML that describes the list and provides its user interface and XML that contains the list data. You can edit or link to a list through its ASPX page, or you can use the SharePoint Lists Web Service to access the list directly through ...