Dynamic Sections and External Data

I recently discovered a little feature in Excel that might point the way to an explicit representation of dynamic sections. When importing external data, you can set the flags “Fill down formulas in columns adjacent to data” and “Insert entire rows for new data”. Imported XML data is even better.

External Data

When set, the two flags make a data update behave very much like a dynamic section in SEJ. Excel replicates the formulas in the first row to all imported data rows, and it shifts down anything below the range if necessary.

What’s less convincing is that you would have to have some sort of external data source for your sample data. While this can be an external Excel file, it still requires you to manage this secondary file. And you’d have to mess about with the data import wizard and the imported data properties dialog.

XML Data

Importing XML data is much better. Imported XML data is an Excel list. Excel automatically handles computed columns in such lists properly. It is also very easy to enter sample data directly into the list, which is later overwritten with the contents of XML data files.

However, you need at least a sample XML data file, or an XML schema, to be able to define XML imports. This may often be rather cumbersome.

Conclusion

In both scenarios, there is no support for nested repeated data, which SEJ supports. So while they looked promising, I don’t think it either of them will really be a viable substitute.