Excel Inserts

How to add custom Excel content to your spreadsheets

Overview

There may sometimes be elements of your spreadsheet that cannot be generated by Models. If this is the case, you can usually achieve your desired output using Excel Inserts.

Excel Inserts are just pre-built workbooks that can contain any kind of content. They may have no links to your generated Model (e.g. a simple cover sheet), or they might interact with your Model, (e.g. complex charts designed to show a specific output, or a separate Excel model that produces some inputs into your main Model).

You can connect your Excel Inserts to your main Model in either direction, as shown below.

Connections from Excel Insert sheets to Models-generated sheets

Read more here about how to connect Assumption Values to Inserts, and in the next section about how to create Outputs from generated sheets to your Inserts.

We will continue to add functionality, so always check latest features before using an Excel Insert to ensure that your desired spreadsheet output cannot be achieved within Models.

Creating and managing Excel Inserts

Create Inserts from the XL Inserts tab of the Model Editor, or from any list of Inserts. In the Inserts dialog (shown below), you must select an existing Excel (.xlsx) file from disk, and enter a name.

Excel Inserts wizard

When you create an Insert, Models creates a copy of the Excel file into your Taglo data directory. If you want to make subsequent changes to the Excel, you will need to edit this copy. You can open it by expanding the preview of the Insert, and clicking on the name, as shown below (1).

Opening an Excel Insert file

Adding Insert sheets to your generated Excel

To generate Excel including Insert sheets, you must add sheets to your Layout.

In the new Sheet wizard, select the Excel Insert sheet type to be presented with the steps as shown below. Here you can select an existing or new Excel Insert (1), and then choose a sheet from the Excel file (2). You can then edit the sheet details in the Setup step (3), including sheet name and tab color.

Sheet wizard for Excel Insert

If your Excel Insert has multiple sheets, you must add each one to the Layout separately. Each sheet can be independently positioned and formatted within your generated Excel.