Most users will want to use the worksheet function dialogs to configure the worksheet functions. However, it is possible to enter a worksheet function directly into the Excel formula bar. First, select an appropriately dimensioned array of cells for the expected results. In the formula bar, begin the function with "=" and, after typing in the function and arguments, end the entry using CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to indicate that it is an array formula. (For a single cell, you can press ENTER or CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.) Excel encloses the formula in braces, { }, in the formula bar to indicate that it is an array formula.
A worksheet function entered in this way can be edited with the appropriate worksheet function dialog by selecting the cell that contains the function formula and then selecting . On the worksheet function dialog, you can then easily resize the array or change the values of one or more arguments.
Note that it is possible to manually configure a function using advanced Excel features such as cell references and expressions for any argument, even those that do not support cell references in the worksheet function dialogs. These formulas can still be edited with the worksheet function dialogs; only if an argument is actually changed in the dialog are the manually edited cell reference or expression be lost. For example, a Columns argument could be entered as CONCATENATE ($A$1, ";", $A$2); if A1 contained "timestamp,GMT" and A2 contained "value" then the dialog would show "timestamp,GMT" and "value" as the selected columns. If any change was made to the selected columns in the dialog, then the argument would be written back as a single text string enclosed in quotes (that is, in the normal way). If no change was made to that field in the dialog, the CONCATENATE( ) expression would remain unchanged.
Excel imposes various limits on the length of formulas and array functions. If you need to reduce the length of an array function, you can put any of its arguments in a separate cell and then use a cell reference in the formula. In the example above, for instance, you can enter =CONCATENATE($A$1, ";", $A$2) in cell B1, and then refer to $B$1 as the Columns argument in the array function.
The worksheet functions are:
The format for each function, an example, and a description of the function arguments are presented in the remainder of this topic. Note, in the examples, that some of the arguments (such as strings, column names, tags, dates and times) must be enclosed in quotation marks, while others (cell references, numbers, and Booleans) are not.
During the installation of DeltaV Reporter, important sample Excel workbook files are copied to the C:\DeltaV Reporter\Definitions folder. You can use these as examples of using the DeltaV Reporter worksheet functions and as templates to create report definition files for automatically generating scheduled reports from the Event Chronicle database. There are system configuration settings required to automatically generate scheduled reports.