Auto dialer

[William Millspaugh]

In MSaccess, you have an autodialer to use to call a certain phone
number that is in a field, Does Excel have the ability to auto call a
phone number found in a selected cell? Thanks Bill

[Relative Zero]

Bill,

> In MSaccess, you have an autodialer to use to call a certain phone
> number that is in a field, Does Excel have the ability to auto call a
> phone number found in a selected cell?

If you are using Excel 2000 I understand that there is an option under the
File menu for dialing direct from excel otherwise you will need to resort to
one of the following solutions.

John Lacher provides an Excel spreadsheet which dials phone numbers using
the Windows 95 Dialer and Windows3.11 Cardfile. The spreadsheet can be found
at http://lacher.com/examples/lacher35.htm. John's solution uses sendkeys to
transfer the number from cells on your spreadsheet to the dialing
application.

John Walkenbach also details a sendkeys solution in "Microsoft Excel 2000
Power Programming with VBA"

An alternative approach is to use Telephony Application Programming
Interface (TAPI) which is supplied with:
* Windows NT 4.0 SP3 or later.
* Windows 95 or later.

For further information on tapiRequestMakeCall refer to:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/tapi22/func1_3vcc.htm

Additional TAPI support can be found in the online "MAPI, SAPI, TAPI
Developer's Guide" by Michael C. Amundsen at:
http://kitap.ankara.edu.tr/0672309289/index.htm

I have included some code which includes a 'wrapped' subroutine for the TAPI
function (Dial) together with a very basic routine (Reader) for transferring
your numbers from a range (Phone) in your spreadsheet to the dialing
application. Obviously the details of this routine depend on your
requirements.

To set your own location, number and any numbers required to dial out from
your phone run dialer.exe and set preferences as required. These preferences
are stored in Telephon.ini
--
Regards, Vaughan Griffiths
Relative Zero Pty. Ltd.
____________________________________________________________________________
Option Explicit

Private Declare Function tapiRequestMakeCall& Lib "TAPI32.DLL" _
(ByVal DestAddress$, ByVal AppName$, ByVal CalledParty$, ByVal Comment$)
' Possible error return values from tapiRequestMakeCall function
Private Const TAPIERR_NOREQUESTRECIPIENT = -2&
Private Const TAPIERR_REQUESTQUEUEFULL = -3&
Private Const TAPIERR_INVALDESTADDRESS = -4&
Private Const TAPIERR_INVALPOINTER = -18&

Sub Dial(strPhoneNo As String, Optional strCalledParty As String, _
Optional strComment As String, Optional bError As Boolean)
Dim strErr As String
Dim lngResult As Long

' Assign Default values to optional arguments
If IsMissing(strCalledParty) Then strCalledParty = ""
If IsMissing(strComment) Then strComment = ""
If IsMissing(bError) Then bError = True

lngResult = tapiRequestMakeCall&(Trim(strPhoneNo), _
CStr(Caption), strCalledParty, strComment)
'Display error message unless requested otherwise
If bError And lngResult <> 0 Then
strErr = "Error dialing " + strPhoneNo + ": "
Select Case lngResult
Case TAPIERR_NOREQUESTRECIPIENT
strErr = strErr & "Unable to start/use Dialing application."
Case TAPIERR_REQUESTQUEUEFULL
strErr = strErr & "Dialing requests queue is full."
Case TAPIERR_INVALDESTADDRESS
strErr = strErr & "Phone number is invalid."
Case TAPIERR_INVALPOINTER
strErr = strErr & "Pointer error."
' This error should not occur
Case Else
strErr = strErr & "Unknown error."
' The four errors listed are all of the current function
' error returns but who knows what the future will bring
End Select
MsgBox strErr, vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "Dialing Error"
End If
End Sub

Sub Reader()
Dim rngPhone As Range
Dim rngCell As Range
Set rngPhone = Application.Range("Phone")

For Each rngCell In rngPhone
Dial (rngCell.Value)
Next rngCell
End Sub