[ACCEPTED]-Pretty Print Excel Formulas?-worksheet-function

Try Excel Formula Beautifier http://excelformulabeautifier.com/. It pretty 3 prints (aka beautifies) Excel formulas.

(I 2 help maintain this, always looking for feedback 1 to make it better.)

This VBA code will win no awards, but it's 12 O.K. for quickly looking at typical formulas. It 11 just does what you'd do with parens or separators 10 manually. Stick it in a code module and 9 call it from the VBA immediate window command 8 line. (EDIT: I had to look at some formulas 7 recently, and I improved on what was here 6 from my original answer, so I came back 5 and changed it.)

Public Function ppf(f) As String
    Dim formulaStr As String

    If IsObject(f) Then
        Debug.Assert TypeOf f Is Range

        Dim rng As Range
        Set rng = f

        formulaStr = rng.Formula
    Else
        Debug.Assert VarType(f) = vbString

        formulaStr = f
    End If

    Dim tabs(0 To 99) As Long

    Dim tabNum As Long
    tabNum = 1

    Dim tabOffset As Long

    Dim i As Long
    Dim c As String
    For i = 1 To Len(formulaStr)
        c = Mid$(formulaStr, i, 1)

        If InStr("({", c) > 0 Then
            ppf = ppf & c

            tabNum = tabNum + 1
            tabs(tabNum) = tabs(tabNum - 1) + tabOffset + 1
            tabOffset = 0

            ppf = ppf & vbCrLf & Space(tabs(tabNum))
        ElseIf InStr(")}", c) > 0 Then
            tabNum = tabNum - 1
            tabOffset = 0

            ppf = ppf & c & vbCrLf & Space(tabs(tabNum))
        ElseIf InStr("+-*/^,;", c) > 0 Then
            tabOffset = 0

            ppf = ppf & c & vbCrLf & Space(tabs(tabNum))
        Else
            ppf = ppf & c

            tabOffset = tabOffset + 1
        End If
    Next i
End Function

If you call it like so:

?ppf([q42])

you 4 don't have to worry about escaping your 3 double quotes and so on. You'll get output 2 that looks like this:

AC6+
AD6+
(
 IF(
    H6="Yes",
    1,
    IF(
       J6="Yes",
       1,
       0)
    )
 )
+
IF(
   X6="Yes",
   1,
   0)

You can also call it 1 with a plain string.

Here's a commercial solution that may work 1 for you:

http://www.uts.us.com/ItemDetails.asp?ItemID=1100-40-0000-00

A trial version is apparently available.

This version of the above code snippet now 7 also handels quoted characters differently, which 6 means, it leaves them alone and doesn't 5 let them effect the indenting if they are 4 inside a string like:

"This ({)},;+*-/ won't lead to a linebreak" 

It is controlled by 3 the boolean variable bInsideQuotes. It also 2 uses

.FormulaLocal

to make it possible for Endusers to 1 see something they know.

Public Function prettyPrintFormula(f As Variant) As String
    Dim formulaStr As String
    Dim ppf As String

    If IsObject(f) Then
        Debug.Assert TypeOf f Is Range

        Dim rng As Range
        Set rng = f

        formulaStr = rng.FormulaLocal
    Else
        Debug.Assert VarType(f) = vbString

        formulaStr = f
    End If

    Dim tabs(0 To 99) As Long

    Dim tabNum As Long
    tabNum = 1

    Dim tabOffset As Long

    Dim i As Long
    Dim c As String
    Dim bInsideQuotes As Boolean
    bInsideQuotes = False
    For i = 1 To Len(formulaStr)
        c = Mid$(formulaStr, i, 1)

        If InStr("""", c) > 0 Then
            bInsideQuotes = Not bInsideQuotes
        End If
        If InStr("({", c) > 0 And Not bInsideQuotes Then
            ppf = ppf & c

            tabNum = tabNum + 1
            tabs(tabNum) = tabs(tabNum - 1) + tabOffset + 1
            tabOffset = 0

            ppf = ppf & vbCrLf & Space(tabs(tabNum))
        ElseIf InStr(")}", c) > 0 And Not bInsideQuotes Then
            tabNum = tabNum - 1
            tabOffset = 0

            ppf = ppf & c & vbCrLf & Space(tabs(tabNum))
        ElseIf InStr("+-*/^,;", c) > 0 And Not bInsideQuotes Then
            tabOffset = 0

            ppf = ppf & c & vbCrLf & Space(tabs(tabNum))
        Else
            ppf = ppf & c

            tabOffset = tabOffset + 1
        End If
    Next i
    prettyPrintFormula = ppf
End Function

I just solved the issue by using the VS 6 Code sql-formatter extension. I simply paste my formular 5 to a sql file and format with the sql-formatter.

When 4 I put this to file

{=IFERROR(INDEX(names,SMALL(IF(groups=$E5,ROW(names)-MIN(ROW(names))+1),COLUMNS($E$5:E5))),"")}

It comes out like that:

{ = IFERROR(
  INDEX(
    NAMES,
    SMALL(
      IF(groups = $ E5, ROW(NAMES) - MIN(ROW(NAMES)) + 1),
      COLUMNS($ E $ 5 :E5)
    )
  ),
  ""
) }

Its 3 not perfect but acceptable for my taste. And 2 this can be copied and used back into Excel 1 / google sheets.