XcelCraft

An open-source Excel add-in: everyday cleanup and bulk operations, plus keyboard-driven tools for financial models. Plain VBA, one file to install, free to read and change.

Two families

Every tool belongs to one of two menus. Utilities are everyday cleanup and bulk operations: text, numbers, dates, fill, sheets, ranges, rows and columns, selection, layout, notes, links, inspection, files, import and export. Modeling is keyboard-driven work on financial models: format cycles for numbers, colours, borders and fonts, cell-type colouring, formula guards and resolvers, verbatim and linked paste, growth-rate and summary helpers, precedent and dependent navigation, consistency checks, a model audit report and chart helpers.

Every tool

Using it

Tools run from the menu under Excel's Add-ins tab, or from a shortcut. Search for a tool finds any of them by a word in its name, Run the last tool again repeats it, and Undo the last tool takes one step back: Excel can't undo what a macro changed, so tools that work in place take a snapshot first.

Cycles step through a list of number formats, colours, borders or fonts: press once to start, press again on the same selection to move to the next step. Every cycle's steps can be edited from the menu.

The paste tools (verbatim, keep internal links, links, transposed, number formats, insert) need to know where the source is, because VBA can't read Excel's clipboard, so you mark the source range first. Quiet mode turns off the result pop-ups.

Inside

XcelCraft is written from scratch in VBA, with no third-party code, and ships as a single .xlam. There is no ribbon XML and no installer: the menu is built by code when the add-in loads, so everything it does can be read in the modules that make it up.

It runs on Windows and Mac Excel from text sources alone: no compiled components, no Windows API calls, no UserForms. Every tool is a Public Sub XC_<Name>() registered in the menu module, so nothing collides with your own macros, and a structural linter checks every module on each push. The source is released under the MIT license.

    Install it

    1. Get the add-in Download it from the top of this page. If you have the source, import everything in src/ into a blank workbook in the VBA editor and save it as an Excel Add-in (.xlam).
    2. Turn it on In Excel go to File, Options, Add-ins, then next to Manage: Excel Add-ins choose Go and tick XcelCraft. On a Mac it's Tools, Excel Add-ins.
    3. Find the menu It appears under the Add-ins ribbon tab as Menu Commands (on a Mac, in the menu bar). Shortcuts install on their own.
    4. If the menu is missing Run the BuildMenu macro once. Shortcuts use Excel's OnKey syntax and assume a US keyboard layout; change them from the Keyboard shortcuts menu if yours differs.

    Beta: linted and cross-checked, not yet exercised end to end. The code avoids everything Mac Excel lacks, but it hasn't been run on a Mac yet.