Posting a message here with an attachement

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Guest

I have a question which can get quite detail with the explantion unless I am
able to post the actual spreadsheets to go with the questions?
 
Most people won't open attachments (although I know that some do).

Try outlining your question.

Can the larger problem be broken down into several minor problems?
Is the problem spreadsheet, VBA or chart based?
 
Another thing that many users find irritating is multiposting the same question
to different newsgroups. If you feel you need to post to several newsgroups
(usually, it's not necessary), it's best to cross-post one message to several
newsgroups.

Chip Pearson has some nice notes that you may want to review:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/newposte.htm
 
We do NOT like attachments here unless invited to send to a personal email.
So, get with the detail.
 
I personally sympathize with you - my own personal opinion is that while it
may be 'risky' to open some attachments, with proper security measures, it's
no big deal. I assist at other sites where attached files are the rule
rather than the exception. Nothing like seeing a real world example to
provide fast, accurate, no guessing assistance.

I just read a thread in these discussion groups where there were about 3 or
4 exchanges (call it 6 or 8 postings) just trying to make sure that two
people were talking about the same downloaded template - and the help hasn't
even begun to get given after all of that delay.

Of course the time and effort involved in trying to help describe a problem
or describe a solution here sure helps to assure that someone is truly
seeking help, and that the help offered is something someone felt worth the
effort to give.

Feel free to email the workbook to me as an email attachment with a complete
as you can provide description of the problem in your email and I'll try to
assist you with it. Remove spaces from this address: jlatham @ jlathamsite.com
 
Pat-on-the-back for your offer, to the OP, but this means that the rest of
us will miss out :-(
 
The question becomes which is more important: posting the question/answer
here and all of us learning from it, and I readily admit this is an added
benefit to the entire process.

However, is not the 'prime directive' to assist others? If the inability to
express a problem combined with a rather terse "we don't like attachments
here" results in someone leaving without assistance, hasn't everyone lost?

It amazes me, and I've brought this up to MSFT through my MVP Lead, that the
ability to upload pretty much doesn't exist here. You'd think with all the
computing power and storage available that such a feature doesn't exist.
Besides the example I gave earlier, just finished (not) helping someone that
had a problem, only to find that auto-calculate had been turned off in his
problematic workbook. No way to 'see' that at a distance, but an examination
of the workbook would have revealed it right away. Luckily he was not
someone to just sit and wait on a solution to fall in his lap, kept looking
and found the problem himself.

I just think we all lose something because the ability doesn't exist,
whereas, with the ability we would all have another tool to use to provide
even better assistance, and provide it faster, on occassion.
 
Personally, I don't like to see attachments. Part of it springs from when I
used dialup. I didn't want to see a 500k workbook asking how to add two cells.

In fact, I've chosen to avoid answering posts that include attachments, point at
another site that holds a workbook (or a .jpg of the problem) or is composed in
HTML. But that's just my decision.

But I do think that in most cases, there has to be a description of what needs
to be resolved--with or without an attachment. I also think that many people
will not bother with that description--they'll just take the easy way out and
say "please see sheet2, it doesn't work right".

Another problem is that google won't archive attachments. So as a learning
exercise, as soon as the post ages off whatever servers you use, the
question/responses won't be of much use.

And in the case of your specific example, you, er, the OP was pretty darn lucky
that you opened his workbook as the first workbook in that excel session. Else
you wouldn't have seen how the calculation mode was set.
 
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