Survey Compiling Instructions
Preparation
If you do not already have a copy of the Survey Compiling Program on your computers desktop, please first obtain a copy from the OHF online library or from the OHF design team via email.
Though not necessary, we recommend that you save the program to your desktop for easy access during the Dialogue process.
Before running the program, you must set the security settings for Excel to allow macros to run (setting "medium" is recommended). Macros, in this case, are small programs, written in a Microsoft language called Visual Basic, that greatly extend Excel's capabilities. To create this program, a number of custom macros were combined with a basic excel spreadsheet to create a sophisticated and powerful computational assistant to those of you hosting and/or facilitating a dialogue. (Before this, facilitators had to calculate by hand and each participant had to draw their own group priorities chart - ugh!) Without enabling these macros to run on your computer, the Survey Compiling program will not work.
However, in an attempt to do due diligence here, we must also explain that macros, because of their power, have traditionally been one of the primary means by which viruses are spread and damage computers. So though this program does not contain a virus and you must enable macros to run in Excel for this program to work, we recommend that you set your security setting to "medium" which means that Excel will prompt you before running any macros. This gives you protection in that you must choose to enable macros each time you open any excel file that contains macros, including this one. Further, we encourage those of you who are concerned (or interested) to read more about macro security settings in this Microsoft article. Finally, we strongly recommend (and provide instructions in this regard) that you return your macro security settings to their highest setting after you have finished runninng this program.
To set your macro security setting to medium, open Excel (just Excel, d o not open the Survey program at this time.) by clicking on your Start menu, then browsing to All Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Excel. (Note: Your specific location may be different.).
When Excel is open, go to the Tools menu, the browse to Macro -> Security.
When the Security window pops up, select "Medium" from the options provided.
Then close Excel. You should now be ready to run the program.