My Vendor Did It Again

Our vendor did it again: the data format changed – basically, the columns shifted - so that my formulas did not pull in the right numbers or any numbers at all. None of the 60+ files worked. Fortunately I quickly spotted the issue (and some of the managers are getting comfortable with numbers and excel and figured out the source of problem, too – I could tell they were proud and they should be!). I knew what the fix should be; however, it meant updating 60+ files (probably close to 67 files). The last time I did something like this it took me somewhere around 2 hours. This time it took me more than 2 hours because I also fixed the imbalances that did not relate to the vendor issue. I told them to go ahead and save the files which meant all imbalances were left for me to correct (it was hard to figure out which errors/imbalances pertained to the change in data format and which to missing data in the computer system). I knew there was no way for me to update the files quicker than 2 hours so I had to deal with the aftermath instead of them waiting two hours to do the report.

Fortunately, I did have an old macro that did most of the actions and corrections I needed; I just needed to update it with new formulas. Since all of the files have auto-open macros that immediately begins to run upon opening the file, I needed to open the files myself and deal with the macro messages; I couldn’t make a macro deal with another macro. I haven’t found anything online yet that worked. It’s that opening of the files myself is what takes me about 2 hours to go through all of the files and run the macro to fix the formulas. I would imagine that if I could program a macro to deal with the auto-open macro, the whole process would be much quicker than 2 hours.

Then yesterday, at home my own machine had to do some security update so my machine was hijacked. I couldn’t post yesterday; instead I spent time watching over my machine and fixing up my security program because it was shut off by Microsoft (I think) and then I needed to get the security program to run and update its security.

Anyway, I’m glad this week is over.