I wonder how I can use an excel sheet as a function.

Let's say I have a complex calculation in Sheet1 with one parameter I would like to iterate over a range like [1 to 400] in a second sheet to create an x, f(x) table in Sheet2.

I'll be using Excel or Open Office.

How would I go about doing this?

Thanks.

Progress update

Attempted to do a test in the Sheet (General):

Public Function test() as Boolean

    test = True

End Function

Then in a cell:

=test()

Resulting in #Name?

Also tried scouering online tutorials.

Partially solved:

• Visibility of the function is achieved by putting the code in a module.


• Insert -> module in VBA.

Progress:

Setting av value using

 Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1").Value = 10



 or



 Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(1,1).Value = 10

failes silently and doesn't execute the line under.

Progress:

The techniques work fine if I dumb down the code to a parameterless subroutine and assign it to a button.

Workaround

Implementation was really straight forward when implementing using a VBA macro launched from a button rather than using a function.

I iterated over a range of rows to get the inputs to the calculations.

The best way is to create the algorithm in Excel VBA. You can open up VBA and type this

Public Function Test1(x as Integer, y as Integer)  

    Test1 = x*y  

End Function   

You can call this function like any other function from the formula bar

In formula bar for A1

• 
  =Test1(2,4) with a result of 8.

Change the algorithm in VBA to get the results you are looking for.

I was looking for an answer to a similar question and found something like that:

public function GetWhatever(byval p1 as variant, byval p2 as variant) as variant

  'Make sure you're in AutoCalculation mode, otherwise use me.calculate

  me.range("A1").value = p1

  me.range("A2").value = p2

  GetWhatever = me.range("A3").value

end function

SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3570907

One thing what I prefer is to create a DATA TABLE by varying the parameter and then LOOKUP for required value in the created data table.

A more proper way will be to write a code in Excel VBA and it can be called very easily, without much effort. However, if you already have the Excel sheet in your hand, you can easily go with former one by creating a DATA TABLE.