Making Common Functions Available to Others

If you work in a networked environment, you may have a need to make a common set of custom functions available to all the users on your network. For instance, your company may have some specialized functions that perform some financial calculations in a particular way. You may be wondering how to best supply these functions to users on your network, without allowing them to modify the functions themselves.

Perhaps the best way to handle this situation is to put all your functions into a single worksheet, and then compile the worksheet into an Excel add-in. You can then place the add-in on a shared network directory, from which everyone can access the add-in. If you need to change the functions in the future, simply update the add-in and copy it to the shared directory. The next time a user starts Excel, the newly updated add-in is loaded, and the updated functions are automatically available.

Other issues of ExcelTips explain how to create and use add-ins. You can also find information at the ExcelTips Web site: http://exceltips.vitalnews.com.