RingtailXL is a tool to automate the development of large Excel Workbooks. Automated spreadsheet development can speed the process, increase transparency and reduce errors.  RingtailXL is relevant for any Workbook which has a timeline across the top.

 

Within the specification of the Workbook, multiple scenarios of data can be stored, which in the resulting Workbook can each be run through the same set of calculations.  Multiple outputs, as reports and charts, can also be specified and stored.  A comprehensive set of checks can also be specified and stored so that a running check can be maintained that the formulae are operating as expected.

 

The resulting Workbooks are modular in design and fully documented. The documentation extends to showing whether each module, as well as the specification of the whole Workbook, has been changed since last checked.

 

RingtailXL was written by a single individual whose professional life relied extensively on spreadsheets.  I started to create RingtailXL because of the continuing lack of tools designed to tame the process of spreadsheet development.

 

Release 2.03 of RingtailXL is now available for downloading.  This is fully functional and does, I think, function across languages and cultures, with the sole reservations that the sample data will only work on machines set to English language and that it will be incapable of translating files created on machines with different language installations of Excel.  It now includes capability to trap circular references and to alter the order of rows in a Component by dragging and dropping.

 

The current (27 July 2010) draft of the manual can be downloaded in e-book form here, in .PDF form here and both inside a Zipped file here.  (You will be prompted that the publisher is unknown, but be assured that the publisher is same as the publisher of this website and of RingtailXL!)

 

RingtailXL featured at EuSPRIG’s 2009 conference, held in Paris in July, 2009.  Click here to read the Author’s paper.