dark star Excelsior User s guide A Year 2000 Auto-Renovation Tool

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1 dark star s y s t e m s Excelsior User s guide A Year 2000 Auto-Renovation Tool

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5 Dark Star Systems Inc., All rights reserved. This document is provided under a license and may be used only in accordance with the terms of such license and with the inclusion of the above copyright notice. No part of this publication may be reproduced, electronically transmitted or otherwise provided or made available to any other person. No title to or ownership of the document is hereby transferred. This document is subject to change without notice. Technical Support Dark Star Systems Inc. provides full technical support by phone, Internet and fax. Our technical support is available Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. EST. Contact Dark Star Technical Support at Tel: in North America, outside North America Fax: Support@darkstarsys.com Or visit our website at Excelsior is a trademark of Dark Star Systems Inc. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, Excel, Explorer, and VBA Editor are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Excelsior User s guide iii

7 CONTENTS Introducing Excelsior 1 Installing Excelsior 2 Opening Excelsior 2 The Excelsior Main Window 2 Selecting Workbooks to Scan/Auto-expand 4 Selecting Scan and Expand Options 5 Excelsior Options Window 5 Patterns Tab 5 Selecting Search Patterns and Options 7 Selecting Expansion Settings 9 Expansion Options Tab 9 General Tab 11 Setting General Options 13 Scanning and Auto-expanding Workbooks 13 Examining the Results 15 Dealing with Exceptions 18 Appendix: Helpful Hints 19 Excelsior User s guide v

9 INTRODUCING EXCELSIOR Are you ready for the millennium? More specifically, are your Excel spreadsheets ready? Your Year 2000 compliance may be in jeopardy because Excel spreadsheets can have problems interpreting any of the following two-digit year formats: calculations in cells using DATE (Excel assumes the year is in the 20th century) partial dates such as DEC 29 (Excel assumes the current year) macros using two-digit date formats pivot years that differ, depending on your Excel version What can you do to fix these problems and ensure Year 2000 compliance? Use Excelsior, the tool designed to help convert your Excel workbooks to a state of Year 2000 readiness. It is one of the first tools of its type that has been designed with the spreadsheet creator in mind. Excelsior is an end-user tool. If you have used Microsoft Excel, Excelsior will look very familiar. It has an interface similar to Excel's VBA Editor. This keeps your learning time short. In fact, Excelsior is meant to be used directly out of the box by Excel users and power-users alike. Once installed, Excelsior can quickly scan (cells, formulas and all macros/vba code), auto-expand (cells, formulas and macros/vba code), check (modifications made to cells and formulas), and adjust the display (cell format) of one or more workbooks at a time all with the single press of a button! It is incredibly easy to use. Within just a few minutes of installing Excelsior, you will be converting your Excel workbooks to a state of Year 2000 compliance! Excelsior is so fast and easy to use, that many people assume it's just a scan engine. For the record, let's clear that up. Excelsior is a scan and autorepair tool. It even does the bulk of the Year 2000 conversion, expanding cells, formulas and macros/vba code for you automatically! 1 And what it cannot auto-expand (due to some ambiguity in the date), it highlights in color, so that you can make the necessary changes yourself. Get ready for the millennium. With Excelsior. 1 Auto-expansion can be toggled on or off. You can even stipulate that Excelsior uses the ISO 8601 date format when it auto-expands. Excelsior User s guide

10 INSTALLING EXCELSIOR Installing Excelsior is simple. First, you need to have Pentium-class PC, 166 MHz or higher, with a CD-ROM drive 32 Mbyte RAM; 2 Mbyte disk space Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0 Microsoft Excel 5.0, or 95, or 97 (Excelsior uses a version of Excel during scanning/auto-expansion) Insert the Excelsior CD-ROM in your CD-ROM drive and click on the Setup icon. Wizards guide you through the installation. The Excelsior program is automatically copied to your computer's hard drive. Note: By default, Excelsior is copied to the C: drive, but you can specify another installation location. The rest of this guide steps you through Excelsior and lets you practice with sample workbooks. These workbooks are located in the directory where you installed Excelsior. OPENING EXCELSIOR To start Excelsior, select Start->Programs->Excelsior, then click the Excelsior icon in this folder. The Excelsior main window opens. THE EXCELSIOR MAIN WINDOW The Excelsior main window looks similar to the Excel VBA Editor. The window has two areas: a white area on the left, and a gray area on the right. When scanning and auto-expansion occur, workbooks and their components appear in the white area. 2 Excelsior User s guide

11 The Toolbar The toolbar has four buttons: New, Open, Scan/Expand, and License. Note: If you are using a restricted version of Excelsior, the License button is inactive. New Starts a new analysis/auto-expansion of a group of workbooks. This new grouping is called a project. Note: If you are using a restricted version of Excelsior, you cannot use the New button until you obtain an Excelsior license using the License button. Contact your distributor or local software manager. Open Invokes the Identify Workbooks window, where you select workbooks to scan/auto-expand. Scan/Expand Is currently grayed out. After you select workbooks, this button is enabled. It invokes the Excelsior Options window, where you specify scanning/auto-expansion options. Excelsior License Lets you obtain an Excelsior license from your organization's Excelsior product manager or from your product distributor. Note: If you are using a restricted version of Excelsior, until you obtain a license, you can only apply Excelsior to the sample workbooks provided. You need an activation code to use Excelsior with your own workbooks. The Menus Like Microsoft Windows products, the menus contain many of the same options as the toolbar. The File menu contains all of the commands found on the toolbar. There is also an Exit option, to exit from Excelsior. The Help menu contains three kinds of help: About Excelsior Shows the Excelsior version you are using. Excelsior Help Topics Provide guidance in converting your workbooks to Year 2000 compliance. A copy of this user guide is also included in a.pdf file that you can print. Check List Provides a "tell-me-quick" list of the steps involved in using Excelsior. Excelsior User s guide 3

SELECTING WORKBOOKS TO SCAN/AUTO-EXPAND To select workbooks to scan/auto-expand, on the Excelsior main window, click the Open button on the toolbar (or select File->Open).

12 SELECTING WORKBOOKS TO SCAN/AUTO-EXPAND To select workbooks to scan/auto-expand, on the Excelsior main window, click the Open button on the toolbar (or select File->Open). The Identify Workbooks window, shown in Figure 1, opens. The Identify Workbooks window initially points to the directory in which you installed Excelsior. The window shows three sample workbooks: Excelsior.xls, Excelsior95.xls (for use if you have Excel 95 installed on your computer), and Excelsior97.xls. Select one or more workbooks. To select one workbook, double-click on it (or single-click on it, then press Open). To select a consecutive block of workbooks, press and hold Shift, then select the first and last workbook in the range. To select workbooks that are not grouped together, press and hold Ctrl and click on each workbook you want to select. The workbook(s) you selected appear on the left (white) side of the Excelsior main window. The Scan/Auto-expand button (the binoculars icon) is now selectable. You are ready to scan and auto-expand. Figure 1 Identify Workbooks Window 4 Excelsior User s guide

13 SELECTING SCAN AND EXPAND OPTIONS After you have selected one or more workbooks to use from the Identify Workbooks window, you are ready to scan/auto-expand. Clicking the scan/auto-expand button in the toolbar invokes the Excelsior Options window. You use this window to input all parameters required for scanning and auto-expansion. EXCELSIOR OPTIONS WINDOW The Excelsior Options window is where you set all of your search and expansion options. This window has three main tabs: Patterns, Expansion Options, and General. Each of these tabs is described in the following sections. PATTERNS TAB The Patterns tab lets you add your own custom search patterns and select special search options. This tab has two sub-tabs that allow you to manage patterns for both Search and Expansion. Search Sub-tab There are three sections to the Search sub-tab: a list of built-in search patterns (custom search patterns can also be added by the end user), a Pattern management section for adding and removing custom search strings, and a Search options section containing a number of user-selectable options. See Figure 2, Excelsior Options: Patterns, Search Sub-tab. Excelsior User s guide 5

Figure 2 Excelsior Options: Patterns, Search Sub-tab Search List The search list displays Excelsior's 69 built-in search patterns and includes entries such as Date, Year, and 1990.

14 Figure 2 Excelsior Options: Patterns, Search Sub-tab Search List The search list displays Excelsior's 69 built-in search patterns and includes entries such as Date, Year, and If you've added your own custom patterns, they are also displayed here. Pattern Management The Pattern Management section enables you to add new search patterns to, or remove existing patterns from, the search list. Note: Before you add your own custom search patterns, examine some typical macros/vba code in your spreadsheets to find unique date-related references. 6 Excelsior User s guide

15 Search Options The Search Options section offers a sophisticated choice of search options. The default is Apply search to VBA/macros. This option applies the search list to VBA/macros only. Find Whole Word Only Searches for only a complete word. For example, if you select this option, Excelsior will search for the whole word "paydate" (if this was one of your search patterns) but not for the partial matches "pay" or "payperiod". Excelsior's default setting does not use this option. If you know exactly what you're looking for, turn on this option. Match Case This is another option commonly used in Microsoft applications. Identifies matches only if their case exactly matches the case of the words and patterns in the search list. For example, if you select this option, and "Date" is one of your search patterns, Excelsior will ignore "date", "DATE" and even "DaTe". Apply search to VBA/Macros Applies the list of search patterns on this tab to VBA code and macros. By default, this option is turned on. Apply search to cells/formulas Applies the list of search patterns on this tab to cells and formulas. If you select this option, cells and formulas will be examined against both this list and the list on the Expansion sub-tab. Use this option to broaden your search. Maximize search capabilities Broadens the search by using built-in daterelated rules useful for identifying potential dates. This is the broadest search option and can result in numerous date hits. Use this option for maximum-strength examination of your workbooks. Note: This search option can result in numerous false positive identifications. SELECTING SEARCH PATTERNS AND OPTIONS 1. On the Patterns tab of the Excelsior Options window, examine the list of search patterns provided. 2. To delete an item from the list of patterns, click on the item, then click the Remove button. The item is deleted from the list of patterns. 3. To add a search pattern to the list, type the item in the New Search Pattern box, then click the Add button. The new pattern is added to the bottom of the search pattern list. Excelsior User s guide 7

4. Select from the five search options provided on the bottom half of the Search tab window. 5. To set your expansion options, click on the Expansion sub-tab.

16 4. Select from the five search options provided on the bottom half of the Search tab window. 5. To set your expansion options, click on the Expansion sub-tab. Expansion Sub-tab The Expansion sub-tab, shown in Figure 3, has a list of expansion patterns and two expansion settings. Figure 3 Excelsior Options: Patterns, Expansion Sub-tab Expansion Patterns The expansion patterns are composed of wildcard placeholders, indicated by pound signs (#), question marks (?), and asterisks (*). A pound sign wildcard represents a number. A question mark wildcard represents a single character. An asterisk wildcard placeholder represents any number 8 Excelsior User s guide

17 of characters. These same wildcards are commonly used in software from companies like Microsoft. By using wildcards, Excelsior can simultaneously consider numerous date-related permutations during scan/autoexpand. So although this list contains 32 search patterns, Excelsior performs many more comparisons than this. You cannot modify the Expansion Patterns list. Excelsior needs to understand possible date formats in order to expand them. The necessary corresponding logic to do this is built into Excelsior for each of the 32 search patterns/templates provided. Expansion Settings There are two expansion settings: Apply auto-expansion to cells/formulas, and Apply auto-expansion to VBA/Macros. By default, both settings are turned on. Excelsior will automatically expand any pattern in your cells, formulas and VBA code that matches the list of expansion templates on this tab. If you turn both of these options off, Excelsior moves into scan-only mode. SELECTING EXPANSION SETTINGS 1. Apply auto expansion to cells/formulas, to VBA/Macros, to both, or to neither by using the checkboxes beside each of these options. 2. To continue setting Excelsior options, click the Expansion Options tab. EXPANSION OPTIONS TAB The Expansion Options tab, shown in Figure 4, lets you specify a pivot year and the display format. Excelsior User s guide 9

Figure 4 Excelsior Options: Expansion Options Expansion Pivot Year The pivot year is used to expand any two-digit years that Excelsior finds, to four digits.

18 Figure 4 Excelsior Options: Expansion Options Expansion Pivot Year The pivot year is used to expand any two-digit years that Excelsior finds, to four digits. For example, if you chose 40 as the pivot year, two-digit years from 1 to 40 would be expanded to four-digit years beginning with 20. The two-digit date 29 would be expanded to Note: Although both Excelsior and Excel both use pivot years, they are used for different purposes. Excel uses its pivot year to make guesses about the century when confronted with two-digit dates. Excelsior uses its pivot year to expand and permanently change any two-digit years it finds. Your pivot year in Excel and Excelsior can be two different values. To set the pivot year you can click on the slider, which has increments of ten, or enter the date in the text box. Notice that the two are connected: change one and the other changes accordingly. You are dynamically provided with a sample expansion when you select a pivot year. The default pivot year is 30 the same pivot year that is used in Excel 97 and Excelsior User s guide

19 Note: If you often deal with early twentieth-century dates such as 1926 in your business, you may require a lower pivot date. Otherwise, the two-digit year "26" will be auto-expanded to 2026 by Excelsior. The choice of a pivot year for date expansion is often made at the corporate level. Display Formats The Expansion Options Tab also has two display format options. Auto-expand date-related formats in cells Sifts through all the cell formats searching for "yy". If this format is found, it is converted to "yyyy". By default, this option is selected. This is a display-only option. Convert formats to ISO 8601 standard (yyyy-mm-dd) Automatically converts any dates found during the expansion process to the ISO 8601 standard format of yyyy-mm-dd. Excelsior will only apply this to any dates (in cells, formulas and VBA code) that it expands. It will not change the format of all dates in your workbook to the ISO standard. GENERAL TAB The General tab, shown in Figure 5, lets you set display colors and select file management options. Colors The Colors section of the General tab specifies the color of date-related VBA hits and expanded VBA code. By default, VBA hits are shown in red and expanded VBA code is shown in green. You can change either of these colors by clicking on the color button beside the option, then choosing another color from the color palette that appears, and then clicking the OK button. The color palette disappears and the color button is changed to the color you specified on the palette. Excelsior remembers your color selections so that you don't have to continually change them. Excelsior User s guide 11

20 Figure 5 Excelsior Options: General File Management The File Management area of the General tab has two options. By default, both are set. Make copy of workbook before auto-expanding Makes backup copies of your workbooks before they are auto-expanded. Copied workbooks are put in a sub-directory of the Temp directory in the Excelsior folder called Backups. This safety feature allows you to roll back to an earlier version of your workbooks if necessary and is generally a wise action whenever computers are permitted to automatically alter data. Maintain a log of all workbooks scanned/auto-expanded Keeps a log in the Excelsior folder called log.txt. This file contains a running list of all workbooks scanned/auto-expanded by Excelsior and is another useful feature of Excelsior's audit trail. 12 Excelsior User s guide

21 SETTING GENERAL OPTIONS 1. To set general Excelsior options, on the General tab of the Excelsior Options window, select colors for date-related hits and expanded VBA code (or use the defaults provided). 2. Select file management options from the two checkboxes provided. Now that you have set the options on all three Options tabs, you are ready to scan/auto-expand. SCANNING AND AUTO-EXPANDING WORKBOOKS To initiate scanning and auto-expansion, set all the options on the three Excelsior Options tabs, then click OK. The Excelsior Options window closes. An information/progress bar is displayed in the center of the screen. Along with a progress bar, several additional status/progress indicators appear on this window. As a workbook is scanned and auto-expanded, its components appear in the tree structure on the left (white) side of the Excelsior main window. After a group of workbooks is scanned and auto-expanded, you are presented with a meta (summary) report that summarizes what was done to each workbook. (See Figure 6.) This report appears immediately after a scan/auto-expand is finished. You can print or save this report or you can embed it in another document for presentations. The report shows you, at a glance, where you need to do more work (the flagged exceptions) to make your workbooks fully Year 2000 compliant. You're almost done. Excelsior has scanned all the VBA code, all the cells and all the formulas, and has examined the cell formats. It has intelligently expanded the cell contents, the formulas, and the macros/vba code. It has changed the display format of the cells so that you will be able to see that dates contain four-digit years in your worksheets. It has even looked into hidden cells and worksheets. Excelsior User s guide 13

22 Figure 6 Excelsior Meta Report Excelsior has checked for ambiguous date entries and flagged these as exceptions. And it has listed these exceptions, along with other relevant statistical information, right inside each workbook, in a new worksheet called Excelsior. Now you can see immediately that a workbook has been reworked for Year 2000 compliance. And you can never lose this record of work (although you can delete it if you like). 14 Excelsior User s guide

EXAMINING THE RESULTS Now it's time to see what Excelsior did. In the Excelsior main window, (see figure 7), the tree containing the workbooks has been expanded to display the workbook components.

23 EXAMINING THE RESULTS Now it's time to see what Excelsior did. In the Excelsior main window, (see figure 7), the tree containing the workbooks has been expanded to display the workbook components. Figure 7 Excelsior Main Window After Scan/Auto-expand These components show the VBA code/macros found in each workbook. Some of the components are followed by numbers in parentheses, which indicate how many lines of code contained date hits in each of these components. You can use the VBA editor to view, track down, and change any date-related entries in your macros and other VBA code. Viewing Components in the VBA Editor 1. To open the VBA Editor, shown in Figure 8, double-click on any component on the left side of the Excelsior main window. The component opens. You see the lines of code in the module/macro. 2. To see the first date hit (or any subsequent date hit) in the module/macro, click the Find Next button. Excelsior User s guide 15

As you proceed through the module/macro, the line number is displayed at the bottom of this window. The slider also gives you a good idea of approximately where you are in the routine. 3.

24 As you proceed through the module/macro, the line number is displayed at the bottom of this window. The slider also gives you a good idea of approximately where you are in the routine. 3. If necessary, you can now change any hits that were not auto-expanded. 4. To commit any changes you made to the workbook, press Save. Figure 8 Viewing Workbook Components If you have enabled Excelsior to automatically expand your VBA code, you will clearly see (in the color you specified) any changes that Excelsior made. Before any line in which Excelsior performed an expansion, a comment has been added showing what the line contained before the expansion. Next, let's view the changes made to the cells and formulas. 16 Excelsior User s guide

Viewing the Excelsior Automatic Cell Expansion Log 1. To start Microsoft Excel and see a report of what was done to the workbook, double-click the workbook name.

25 Viewing the Excelsior Automatic Cell Expansion Log 1. To start Microsoft Excel and see a report of what was done to the workbook, double-click the workbook name. The workbook name is the sample workbook you chose at the beginning of the tutorial, one of Excelsior.xls, Excelsior95.xls, or Excelsior97.xls. 2. Click Enable Macros on the Excel dialog box that appears. The Excelsior Automatic Cell Expansion Log, shown in Figure 9, appears. The log is continued if you scan and auto-expand again, so you are provided with an evolving report. Figure 9 An Excelsior Automatic Cell Expansion Log Excelsior User s guide 17

26 The log shows statistics on the workbook cells and the VBA code, including number of cells or lines of code scanned number of cells or lines of code expanded pivot year search parameters Three columns display the location of each change (worksheet and cell address), the original cell value, and the changed value. Any cells or formulas that Excelsior is unable to convert because of ambiguous date entries (these are called exceptions) are displayed in red and contain no entries in the Changed Value column. Note: If you changed the default-hit color on the General tab of the Excelsior Options window, the exceptions are displayed in the color you chose. Sometimes, you will also see entries in yellow. These pertain to formulas that Excelsior found to be suspicious during the expansion process. Viewing a Worksheet You can view the worksheet containing any exception found in the Excelsior Automatic Cell Expansion Log. If you select an exception in the Location column and press Ctrl +E, the worksheet containing that date exception opens and the ambiguous cell is highlighted. Exceptions are highlighted in a red box on screen. DEALING WITH EXCEPTIONS After you have viewed the Excelsior Automatic Cell Expansion Log and the individual worksheets, you can make changes to the exceptions in the worksheets. After you have made the changes, scan/auto-expand again. The number of exceptions decreases. If you've made any changes to date-related references in your macros, the number of VBA date hits also decreases. This information is written to the evolving log maintained in the Excelsior worksheet of every workbook Excelsior analyzes and expands. And now that your Excel spreadsheets are ready for the Year 2000, you can spend your time planning a millennium celebration. 18 Excelsior User s guide

27 APPENDIX: HELPFUL HINTS Locating Your Workbooks To fix your workbooks, first you have to find them. If you're part of a large organization, this can be a challenge. Large organizations usually employ file servers distributed across a local area network (LAN). To convert your workbooks, you may first need to access them from your local server. We recommend that you first create a folder (using the File->New menu item of Microsoft's Windows Explorer), into which you can place copies of your workbooks. After you've converted and tested the changes, you can eventually make the swap. Locate your workbooks when you perform the inventory described in "A Year 2000 Conversion Strategy" (see Help->Excelsior Help Topics on the Excelsior main menu). Don't try to rush the job by finding and converting workbooks as you go. Instead, first locate all your workbooks, and then identify what they are. Next, begin your conversion on copies of the workbooks. (Excelsior makes copies of every workbook you worked on.) Be sure to also scour your own computer for any relevant workbooks. (Use Start->Find, then search My Computer for "*.xls" to locate all Excel files.) Check these files and delete any sample workbooks that you received with Microsoft Excel. Changing Your System Settings Excel relies, to a certain extent, on your PC's system settings for date type. Unfortunately for our Year 2000 conversion efforts, a common default setting is "YY" for "year". We strongly urge you to check and, if necessary, convert your system date. To convert your system date: 1. Select Start->Settings->Control Panel. The Control Panel window appears. It has a selection of icons. 2. Double-click on Regional Settings (the globe icon). The Regional Settings Properties window appears. Excelsior User s guide 19

28 3. Select the Date tab and look at the "short date style" setting. If it doesn't use a four-digit year type, change it to a four-digit year type. 4. Click the Apply button to save your changes and the OK button to close the window. You are returned to the Control Panel. 5. To exit from the Control Panel, select File->Close. 20 Excelsior User s guide

30 Excelsior tames y o u r YEAR 2000 P R O B L E M S Head Office Dark Star Systems Incorporated 617 Redwood Avenue Ottawa, ON K2A 3E8 Canada tel fax info@darkstarsys.com web Technical Support North America Outside N.A fax support@darkstarsys.com web

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