Help with macro for a person who doesn't know anything about macros!!!

[mkmed]

Hello all,

I am new to this forum. I hope one of you has the time and desire to do a significant favor for me. I am at my wits end on how to build a better mouse trap for my cost estimating spreadsheet.

I have been trying to accomplish a task for an extended period of time. Our clients establish items we are allowed to bill for. When I create an estimate for these items there are always subsidiary items that we break down but are unable to bill for directly. The current way I spread these items is by the quantity of manhours each bid item has. This works well except in cases of expensive items that are directly subsidiary to bid item A but the costs are spread over bid items A,B,C,D and so on. Then in the case of a bid item's deletion in the actual construction phase, that is unrelated to the subsidiary item, we end up losing money. I have to tried several attempts to create identifiers to make an item subsidiary and can do it, but due to all the impacting formulas I can't make everything work. What I envision now is an area of the sheet that would be titled something like"holding items". Upon an entry in this segment of the worksheet a box would pop up requesting which line item or items this item would be spread to. Then the formula would tally the the manhours in the selected items and then divide them into this subtotal cost. There are two major issues with this. 1.) the current subtotal for the "bid items" includes a prorated (based on manhours) cost of "no pay items" and "general condition costs" and these will need to be remain 2) This will require a macro, and I know more about brain surgery or rocket science than macros!!! I hope so much that one of you many gurus can help a grateful person out.

I have had this question proposed at another website for quite some time with no results. I thank you for any help you may be able to provide.

Thanks, (Help please!!!)
Mark

[raypayette]

Since you can learn brain surgery and rocket science, you will certainly learn VBA with a good book. Meanwhile try and use the macro recorder, it will record macros automatically that you can study at your leisure.

[mkmed]

Thank you for the vote of confidence. I have amassed quite a library of books on the subject and dedicated many hours but am still clueless. I have been trying to learn for quite some time and I can do some of the simple things, however what I want to accomplish appears to be about two light years away. I guess I will keep reading.

Thanks,
Mark