What is the best way to import data from sophisticated formula enriched Excel files into SalesForce.com?

My current employer (to remain nameless) has a collection of incredibly sophisticated Microsoft Excel 2003 worksheets (developed by contractors, also to remain nameless).

The employer is replacing the Excel-based solution with a SalesForce-based solution (developed by other contractors, likewise to remain unnamed). The SalesForce solution is also very complex using dozens of related objects and "Dynamic SOQL" to contain the data and formulas which previously was contained in the Excel-based solution.

The employer's problem, which has become my problem, is that the data from the Excel spreadsheets needs to be meticulously and tediously recreated in .CSV files so it can be imported into SalesForce.

While I've recently learned I can use CTRL-` to review formulas in Excel, this doesn't solve the problem that variables in Excel have cryptic names like $O$15. If I'm lucky, when I investigate $O$15, I'll find some metadata explaining if n cells up and/or some other data m cells to the left, and/or (in rare instances) there may be a comment on the cell.

Patterns within the Excel spreadsheets are very limited, rarely lasting more than 6 concurrent rows or column开发者_如何转开发s and no two sheets which need to be imported have much similarity.

Documentation of all systems are very limited.

Without my revealing any confidential data, does anyone have any good ideas how I might optimize my workflow?

It's not clear exactly what you need to do: here are 3 possible scenarios, requiring increasing knowledge of Excel.
1. If all you want is to convert the Excel spreadsheets into CSV format then just save the worksheets as CSVs.
2. If you just want the data and not the formulae then it would be simple (using VBA) to output anything that isn't a formula (the cell.Formula won't start with =).
3. If you need to create a linkage excel-->csv-->existing Salesforce objects/SOQL then you will need to understand both the Excel Spreadsheets and the Salesforce objects/SOQL that have been created. This will be difficult unless you have good knowledge and experience of Excel and also understand what the salesforce App requires.

Brian, if you're still working on this, here's one way to approach the problem. I use this kind of process often for updating data between SFDC and marketing automation apps.

1) Analyze the formulae that you're re-creating in Salesforce.com to determine what base data fields you need (stuff that doesn't have to be calculated from something else.

2) Find those columns/rows in your spreadsheets and use Paste Special -> Values in a new spreadsheet to create an upload file with values instead of formulae that you need for each data area (leads, prospects, accounts, etc.)

3) If you have to associate the info with leads or contacts or accounts and you have already uploaded or created those records in Salesforce.com, be sure to export them with their ID numbers. That makes it easy to use the vlookup formula in Excel to match up fields that you need to add and then re-upload the data into Salesforce.

Like data cleaning, this can be a tedious process. But if you take it step by step it shouldn't be too hard. Good luck.