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Five
Great Tips When Using CDXZipStream
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Here are
some tips that can be applied to all versions
of CDXZipStream:
1.
Use copy and paste for CDXZipStream
formulas
If
you've already applied CDXZipStream in your
worksheet and need to use it in another data area,
just copy and paste the existing equations to the
new area and the formulas will get the data
automatically. This works with individual
custom function equations as well as arrays; just
make sure to copy the entire array when applying
it to a new area. Here's a step-by-step
description of how
to copy a CDXZipStream array to a large data set.
2.
Don't scroll through your
data
When
you're dealing with a large set of addresses (and
getting lots of data back from CDXZipStream), it
can be slow and frustrating using the Excel
scrollbar to navigate through it all.
Fortunately there are some very useful
shortcuts that can quickly get you exactly where
you need to go in your worksheet.
Ctrl
- Arrow: To quickly skip to the boundaries
of your data, hold down the Ctrl key and one of
the directional arrows on your keyboard at the
same time. You can easily move to the top, right,
left, and bottom boundaries of your data using the
appropriate arrow keys, and you can continue to
press the arrow key to navigate to other data
sets.
Ctrl
- Shift - Arrow: To select a large area of
your data, hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, and
one of the directional arrows on your keyboard at
the same time.
F5:
Sometimes you just need to go to one
particular cell. Hit the F5 function key at
the top of your keyboard, and you'll see an input
box where you can enter the cell address.
Then just press the enter key, and you'll
instantly arrive at the desired cell.
3.
Speed up Excel
If
you have thousands of equations (or more) in your
worksheet, you may notice that Excel starts to
slow down. That's because every time a cell
in the worksheet is changed, Excel by default
recalculates all equations. This will also
occur with the custom function formulas
CDXZipStream uses to obtain data.
The
easiest approach to this problem is to replace the
equations with their values. Select the
range of equations in your worksheet, and in Excel
2010 from the Home tab, select "Copy" from the
Clipboard group. Then click on the arrow under
"Paste" and select the first "Paste Values" icon
on the left. (This can also be done in Excel 2003
and 2007.) The equations will now be gone,
but the values will remain. And you'll notice that
Excel is much faster and more
responsive.
Note:
If you'd like to create a toolbar shortcut
for pasting values, which is one of the most
common tasks in Excel, please follow
these
instructions .
4.
Use cell references with right-click
functions
When
accessing a right-click function like CDXDistance
or CDXRouteMP, you have the option of inputting an
actual value (like the zip code "38472") or the
cell reference where the data is located (such as
"A1"). If the value is located somewhere in
the worksheet, you should almost always use the
cell reference. Not only is it easier in
most cases, but the resulting CDXZipStream
equation in the worksheet will now be ready to
copy and paste to other data areas without need
for modification.
5.
Rev up CDXZipStream using auto
fill
Auto
fill can really speed up CDXZipStream when you're
getting a lot of data (> 10,000
calculations). Please refer to
this short Microsoft
article about auto fill.
Just remember you can automatically fill a
formula downward, for all adjacent cells, by
double-clicking the fill handle of the first cell
- dragging the handle can be difficult for long
data lists. Not only is auto fill faster,
but Excel will also show you the progress of the
calculations at the bottom of the screen.
When auto fill is finished, you can now use
tip number 3 to manage all those new
formulas. | 
