Analytics
Blog posts’ half life – why bother?
If you are reading this there is a 90% probability that it’s close to the beginning of 2014. I know this because most blog page views happen with the first couple of weeks of posting, […]
Year: 2013
Databases
Accessing parse.com and scriptDB noSQL databases from Excel
I figured it would be pretty nice to be able use one of the cloud based noSQL databases directly from VBA, so that I could share data easily between various platforms. On Excel Liberation , I […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Dealing with Unix timestamps in Excel
If you take data from outside Excel – especially using REST APIS, there’s a good chance that you’ll have to deal with Unix Times. If you are familiar with the Excel Liberation site, you’ll know […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Shared Encryption/decryption library for Google Apps Script.
Encryption/decryption library for Google Apps Script. Amit Agarwal recently showed how to encrypt/decrypt Email messages using a Google Apps Script application in this post The encryption method he used is SJCL, maintained by the Stanford Security Lab, […]
Google Analytics
Tracking your Excel Workbooks with Google Analytics
Last week, I posted how to instrument Excel workbooks so that usage of them could be tracked using Google Analytics. Now we have a week’s worth of data, let’s see what happened. Instrumentation Recap First […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Mitigating for changes in REST API rules and formats
In Rest-Excel library, I have examples of a large number of REST APIs which get data from a wide range of data sources. I have a similar library for Google Apps Script. I have to […]
Json
XML and JSON conversion in VBA
If you are familiar with this blog and the Excel Liberation site, you’ll know that there is a pretty significant focus on getting stuff in and out of Excel. Ease of JSON and javaScript like […]
From VBA to Google Apps Script
Excel custom functions that can lookup data in Google Apps Script ScriptDB
In REST access to Google Apps Script list management functions we looked at accessing the Google Apps ScriptDB and some custom functions using the rest to Excel library In that post, I mentioned that it would even be […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
REST access to list management cloud based functions – plus a VBA example
In Google Apps Script lists and validation I showed how to use custom functions from Google Spreadsheets to perform common spreadsheet tasks like lookup, index, filter, sort, match and apply dataValidation using cloud based lists. Of […]
scriptDB
Validation and lookups using shared scriptDB lists
When the scriptable data validation feature in Google Apps Script came out recently, I started thinking about how we don’t really use the cloud based nature of Google Docs to its potential in a number […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Pinyin Tone converter – Google Apps Script custom functions
I’ve never been shy of writing up something I don’t know much about, and today’s post is no different. A few weeks ago I’d never heard of Pinyin; today, here’s a couple of Google Apps […]
Google Search
What does Google Autocomplete show all over the world ?
It turns out there is a kind of API – suggestqueries.google.com – that you can use to programatically get what Google autocomplete shows when you use search. You know the kind of thing… It’s well known […]
Docs
Google Docs to Excel Asynchronously
I’ve been playing around with creating a promise based framework for VBA for a while now, mainly just to see if it was possible. Here’s a practical implementation that gets the data from a large […]
Databases
Using ScriptDB as a noSQL database for non-Google Apps Script clients
A long time back now, I showed how to publish and prettify source code and scriptdb contents using Google Apps Script. This allows you to embed code or data samples in blog posts and so […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Concept browser for site navigation with d3
I recently posted about a way to navigate sites and blogs by topic using a d3.js force diagram. Following that I was thinking some more about the trend away from organizing data into predefined folders […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Sankey diagrams direct from Excel – update
Being able to create Sankey Diagrams in D3 directly from Excel continues to be one of the most popular topics on the Excel Liberation site even though I first posted this a long time ago now. […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Exploring blogs and sites by d3 tag visualization and effect on site visits
Here’s the daily visits to the Excel Liberation site over the past couple of years. But what’s that over the past 3 weeks, starting 3rd June ..a 40% sudden increase that seems to be sustaining. On […]
D3
Google Fusion Big Data and D3 integration: flight data visualization
In Flight Data from Fusion I introduced integration between Google Fusion and D3.js. This next version fixes up a few issues to do with Google Fusion API quotas and limits (see exponential backoff and jquery promises), and […]
Apps Script & Java Script
jQuery promises and exponential backoff
When using services like Google Fusion API, sometimes you get errors because of over quota attempts – too many requests in too short a time, or the infrastructure is just too busy to service them. […]
D3
Playing around with Tableau Public
With Tableau, you can do loads of visualizations very simply and publish them on “tableau public”. I never tried Tableau before, so I downloaded the tableau public software to play around with. The other day, […]
D3
Visualization of Sites to Tags with d3.js
When we explore a web site, the usual view is that of a tree structure of pages. I wondered if it could be done instead using topics. Which topics are mentioned on a given page? […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Create biased random test data in VBA
Today’s post is a quick function for creating biased randoms from a list of items and weights. You might need this to create some test data, where the outcomes are not completely random. Example […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Digest authentication and Google Apps Script
The other day I was looking around for an example of how to do digest authentication in Google Apps Script (or even plain javascript). I found plenty of theoretical discussions on it, but no actual […]
D3
parse.com and d3.js mashup
Today’s post pulls together a number of concepts I’ve been playing around with lately. As usual my source data and post theme is based on data associated with color schemes – pantone, paint colors etc […]
ScraperWiki
Connections in electoral data – D3 and VBA follow on from oUseful post
Yesterday I showed how to do some data wrangling in VBA and Google Apps Script that Tony Hirst on his oUseful blog had done using scraperwiki, Open refine plus various APIs. Today he posted a quick analysis using […]
ScraperWiki
Mashing up electoral data – follow on from oUseful post
I just saw a great post by Tony Hirst on his oUseful blog where he nicely laid out how to use Open refine plus various APIs to research which candidates were standing for election in […]
Colors
Finding nearest match and other palettes in other fixed color schemes
Color scheme UI I posted about a color scheme explorer app the other day. Given a specific color, it will find – in a given color scheme such as dulux paint colors, the nearest 5 […]
Colors
Parse.com and ScriptDB performance comparison
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of posts to do with messing around with color. I’m using a selection of technologies such as scriptDB, Parse.com, jQuery promises, Google Apps Script, Google Spreadsheets, Google Visualization API and […]
Apps Script & Java Script
More playing around with color, parse.com, scriptDb and Google Apps Script
API for comparing colors I continue to find the topic of comparing colors a fascinating one. As an experiment to see if I could create a REST API serving up JSON and JSONP from a […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Very interesting GAS performance results – run locally using htmlservice
A little while ago, I published an item on GAS performance, showing that a complex calculation test would take about 100 times as long on GAS as the same thing in regular javascript running locally […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Executing Google Apps Script Code directly in javascript – GAS as a CDN
As you know the language of Google Apps Script is javaScript. So you probably have a lot of useful code buried away there, that could be used in web apps. One solution is to copy […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Google Apps Script “execution time exceeded” woes
Just how slow is Google Apps Script ? I’m a big fan of Google Apps Script, but I’m really fed up of seeing “Execution time exceeded”. Obviously data access times can be unpredictable, and although it […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Google Apps Script Color Space Conversions.
In Google Apps Script Color functions I introduced a bunch of functions to manipulate various color spaces from GAS. This was a migration from the same thing in VBA. I extended this to include additional color […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Automatic documentation from VBA – including function arguments
In documenting VBA procedures automatically I showed how to create web pages that documented your VBA projects. I’ve updated that now to also include a popup showing the detail of function arguments too. This page was automatically […]
Json
Using jSon/javaScript like structures in VBA
jSon /VBA functions have always been the most popular topic on the Excel Liberation site and forum. The interesting part about this though is not so much about parsing and stringifying jSon data (which after all is […]
Colors
VBA procedures for CIE LabLch and HSL color scheming
In playing around with color in VBA I introduced a bunch of functions to manipulate various color spaces from VBA. Digging into the whole topic a little more, I wondered if it would be possible to […]
Apps Script & Java Script
Playing around with Color on Google Apps Script
I’m going back to Google Apps Script for today’s post. I’ve been on a little diversion playing around with color in VBA, so now it’s time to implement some of that in GAS. If you have […]
VBA
Example of automatic code updating for VBA
In a previous post I covered a way of automatically including and inserting VBA code in Excel from gists. You would normally use this if you wanted to include a bunch of functions and classes […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
VBA string manipulation optimization with custom classes
Here’s a little bit more on the subject of VBA string manipulation. I showed in a post the other day how things take longer and longer when concatenating large strings in VBA. One reason I […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Inherit link colors from cells – D3 sankey from Excel
We had a question on our forum the other day about whether it would be possible to inherit the cell colors from the color of the originating cells in Excel in the d3.js Sankey diagram […]
VBA
Strings and the garbage collector in VBA : optimizing string concatenation
I find myself doing a fair bit of VBA at the moment, It was a little adjustment coming back, but I suddenly noticed that string concatenations were taking a long time. For example, this would […]
API Specific
API of the Day: facebook fql direct from Excel and Google APPs
Someone asked in our forum yesterday about Facebook Query Language – FQL. Could we get data straight into Excel from facebook? I dont use facebook, so I haven’t paid much attention to it. I had […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Adventures in serializing VBA classes – automatically documenting your modules
Figuring out how to serialize native VBA classes to jSon is something I’ve been working on in the background for some time. If you’ve been following this blog or the related Excel Liberation Site, you […]
Integrating Excel with Maps and Earth
Unused tube stations: discovered via scraperwiki- mapped with Excel and Google Maps
A while ago, I posted something about interesting scraperwiki data, that’s to say public web scrapings that people had created at some point. In getting scraperwiki data into excel, I showed how you could get a […]
Microsoft Office & VBA
Scraperwiki horsemeat data to Sankey, via Excel.
I saw a great blog post on Reshaping Horse Import/Export Data to Fit a Sankey Diagram from Tony Hirst a few minutes ago. In it he shows how to mashup various bits and pieces using […]
Colors
‘Hot doughnut’ chart in Excel
You may have used the doughnut chart in Excel in order to produce a chart like this This is fine, but the problem is that the position of any category changes depending on the data. […]
adsense
Can you make any adSense money with a blog ?
I guess it’s time to look at what’s been going on with the website and blog for 2012, after Martin Hawksey got me wondering after publishing his 2012 stats. Excel Liberation Blog Aside from a […]
Colors
Calculating a friendly font color based on the fill color – Google Apps Script
In Color Ramps for Google Apps Script I covered how to created heatmaps and other color ramps. Picking a good contrast font color One of the problems with a heatmap is that your font color may […]
Badges
I’m awarding badges – Google Apps Script integration with Persona and Mozilla Openbadges
I’m finally awarding Mozilla Open Badges through a complete badge environment that handles questions, marking, badge assertion, persona authentication and Mozilla backpack awards. I introduced this in a previous post, but now that I’ve added the […]