Although in my opinion Excel is a very extensive and diverse program, I regularly come across situations where the standard options are insufficient to perform tasks efficiently.

Fortunately, the program often offers the possibility to work out solutions that fall outside the standard. I have already provided more information about this in general terms in the article of 2021-10-01.

An example of such a situation is working with dates. Especially when a mixture of American date format and more traditional date format is used, uncertainty sometimes arises: in American format 06/02/2021 corresponds to 2 June 2021, in traditional date format it is 6 February 2021. To deal with this situation more smoothly and also to provide the ability to enter a date using a calendar, I've worked out a “Date Picker” Add-in.

This can be used not only to choose a date from a calendar for entry into a cell on a worksheet, but in case the selected cell already contains a date in any date format recognisable by Excel, the displayed calendar will also highlight the corresponding day in red ... so that there can be no doubt about which day is meant.

I had already explained the example of the "Cross-hair" application earlier in the article of 2021-10-08.

In order to make these kinds of tools available to other users in the future, a series of Add-ins (pi Add-ins) are under development. A first “beta” version will most likely be ready by the end of next week.

The following aspects will be incorporated in this “beta” version:

• A “general settings” function, which allows the user to choose in which of the 4 languages (NL, FR, DE, EN) the pi Add-ins should be used, and also allows the user to follow the registration of the applications (it is intended that for a modest fee, the expiration date of the Add-ins may be extended annually);
• A “help” function where the user can find general information about the different modules of the pi Add-ins
• 3 functional add-ins
• the Date Picker
• the Cross-hair add-in
• the possibility to have the shortcuts conveniently available (see article of 2021-10-29)

The development of these applications is done in the Excel version of MS Office 365 on a Windows 11 system, and is also being tested on an Apple Macintosh. To make sure that users of other Excel versions can also benefit from these solutions, I'm looking for volunteers to do "beta-testing".

If you are interested in helping me with this, please get in touch via the pi-ProductivITy contact form (or if you have already corresponded with pi-ProductivITy, you can also send me a direct email).

The "beta-testing" would proceed as follows:

• You inform me about which version of Windows or MacOS is running on your computer and which version of Excel you are using;
• You inform me about which language you have installed those programs in;
• You inform me at which e-mail address I can send you the add-ins;
• You install the add-ins in the Excel application on your computer (which must therefore be “macro-enabled”);
• You send me by e-mail your impressions and suggestions for improvement, and (especially) if applicable error messages with a description of when they occur;
• If applicable, you are obviously most welcome to also propose additional applications you may find interesting for future implementation;
• In exchange for your efforts, after the first “formal” distribution of the commercial version, you can make free use of the pi Add-ins (including any updates) for the first 2 years.

Depending on the number of applicants, pi-ProductivITy may not be able to accept every “candidate”.

I look forward with interest to your feedback.