How to Evaluate Dynamic DDE Formulas

Hi All,

I am new in Excel, but I have some experience in general programming. I
have a problem with DDE dynamic formulas.

I have an application that maintains templates of Excel Formulas in SQL
Server. What I need is to load these formulas in Excel and evaluate them.

These formulas are, in fact, DDE Links to a resource server. The resource
values are updated as they change, and I need that the loaded formulas
respond to the DDE advise event. That is they should change continuosly as
the resource changes.

And more some formulas must be contructed based on a specific cell. For
instance Column 1 has the name of the resource, so the DDE Link formula in
column 2 must be of type =appserver|topic!&CONTENTS OF ("C1").

Well if I manually put the formulas in a cell like "=app|topic!item" they work.
The Server is working OK !!!!

To load the formulas from SQL Server is simple I have already done it. The
problem:

- How to contruct the formula dynamically
- How to evaluate it so that it is refreshed as their value changes in
the server

Thanks in advance

MArcus Baffa wrote...
....
>These formulas are, in fact, DDE Links to a resource server. The
>resource values are updated as they change, and I need that the loaded formulas
>respond to the DDE advise event. That is they should change continuosly as
>the resource changes.
>
>And more some formulas must be contructed based on a specific cell. For
>instance Column 1 has the name of the resource, so the DDE Link formula in
>column 2 must be of type =appserver|topic!&CONTENTS OF ("C1").
>
>Well if I manually put the formulas in a cell like "=app|topic!item"
>they work. The Server is working OK !!!!
....

You've come across one of the archaic deficiencies of Excel. DDE links
in cell formulas can only be static, that is, =app|topic!item. You'd
need to use VBA to make them function dynamically, and that involves
using user-defined formulas (udfs) in VBA to create another Excel
application instance, construct static DDE link formulas and evaluate
them in the other instance, then return their values to the calling
instance. It's slow and relatively fragile.

Can you use VBA to do this?

Thanks Harlan,

Well I have a good experience in VB, maybe I could implement it in VBA.

But as I have told I do not have much experieence in Excel and its Object Model. I did not know that we could develop UDF.

Where can I read about this ????

Thanks again