Wow, this is a great question!
Excel has the ability to do exactly what you requested. The feature you
need is hiding in plain sight in the File > Save As dialog box.
Let's start with the Excel part of this process. Let's begin with a
single workbook that has one or more graphs already in it.
And let's have a folder someplace Called PublishMe to publish the web
stuff to.
So let's go.
* Open the workbook you want to publish
* Use File > Save As Web Page
* Click the selector button in the lower left to Workbook
* Click Web Options
* * General Tab
* * * Fill in a Title (for the web page title)
* * * Fill in keywords (they are CONTENT tags)
* * Files
* * * Check the box to Update Links On Save
* * Pictures
* * * Decide whether you want to allow PNG format pictures (they look
nice). If not checked you'll get JPG or GIF representations of the graphs
* * * Decide on what size monitor you want your web pages to look best
with
* * Encoding
* * * I use Windows (the default) encoding, but haven't tried any of
the others
* Click OK
* Click the AUTOMATE button
* * Decide whether to automatically update the published information
whenever the workbook is saved or according to a set schedule
* * * Set the schedule if you choose the schedule option
* Click OK
* Navigate to the PublishMe folder
* Click SAVE
* File > Save As
* * File Type > Excel Workbook
* * Save the workbook (saves all the settings we just made)
So now what we have is an Excel workbook that will automatically update
the published information either when the workbook is saved or on a
schedule. That's pretty neat!
At this point you could then use an FTP program to upload the entire
PublishMe folder to the web site and then link to the .htm file that
Excel makes inside the PublishMe folder.
But MacOS now supports SMB pretty well, and if you have DAVE from
htttp://
www.thursby.com/ then you get complete SMB support. Which means
that if your web server is not your own Mac, then you can mount the
directory of your web server (say a Windows box or UNIX box or LINUX
box) onto your Mac's Desktop. If you do this and then Ad if you tell
Excel to publish to a folder on the live web server then Excel can
update your web site all by itself by simply making any changes to the
workbook and saving them, or at a set schedule.
I don't know how you update the data in your Excel workbooks, but web
queries and SQL queries can be updated on schedules, too. So you could
create a completely automated workflow that updates your web site with
current data refreshed at an interval that you specify.
The Save As Web Page feature works particularly well on Macs when you
have done a spectacularly good job of formatting the graphs (adding
transparency and shadows that are not available in Office for Windows,
for example).
And if you have lots of workbooks you can write Visual Basic macros or
AppleScripts to open, update, and save them if that is appropriate for
your workflow needs.
Thanks for asking.
-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
