entity data type for data cards
James Pickles
The javascript API for building Excel Add-Ins has support for writing custom functions that return entity data types. This is useful for things like data cards and a cell being able to hold complex data.
Here is an example: https://www.mrexcel.com/excel-tips/excel-custom-data-types/
Does Excel-DNA support this too? e.g. can an ExcelFunction being written to do the same?
Thanks
James
Govert van Drimmelen
Hi James,
The Excel C API, which Excel-DNA uses for UDF support, does not support these extended return types.
It is a request I have made to Microsoft of their Excel announcements blog, but I think if you could add a feedback suggestion through the Excel Send-a-Smile / Frown interface, you might ask for the C API to add such support. We could then do the matching work on the Excel-DNA side.
The closest you can get with the current version of Excel and Excel-DNA is to return an ‘object handle’ to the calling cell.
Then other functions can take the ‘object handle’ to unpack or use the underlying object further.
However, you still won’t get the UI support that entity data types have, so it’s not quite the same.
There is a snippet discussing this approach here: https://groups.google.com/g/exceldna/c/M6SY4b5tLQo/m/dAKVsWpsQ3IJ
An open-source add-in that uses this approach extensively is discussed here: Interpolation in Excel using Excel-DNA - CodeProject
-Govert
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