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= Excel Render =

Excel Render is an Add-in for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that display formulas in their natural mathematical form. Since its first release, it has been continually improved, with the version 3 representing the most significant enhancement. Excel Render is available for Microsoft Excel versions 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013 for Microsoft Windows.

History
CodeCogs has been developed products to document calculations since 2004. Their primary business activity is engineering consultancy, however they also provide various numerical tools. Their stated aim for this add-in for Microsoft Excel is "to simplify the use of mathematics". Microsoft Excel is a popular spreadsheet program used in homes, business, and schools. Although Excel can show the formulas used in calculations most people prefer only to see the values, thereby adding to the overall simplicity of spreadsheet program.

The first version of Excel Render was release 2010. This was a web-power solution quickly implemented in VBA to test the idea, but it was unfortunately limited by the length of the equation that could be rendered in Microsoft Excel. In February 2011, Version 2 was released, which was completed rewritten in C thereby overcoming the earlier equation length limitation. However, to cater for different variants of Excel, separate compilations are needed for Excel 2003 and Excel 2007/2010. A version of the Mac Office has not currently been released. Version 2 greatly enhanced the functionality, with many new ways to represent matrices introduced along with a more robust algorithm to recognise variable names. A sequence of improvements were rapidly released, but perhaps the most significant was support for alternative Excel function names designed for different languages. As an illustration the familiar "SUM" function may also be called case "SOM", "SUMME", "SOMME", "SOMMA", "SUMA", "SOMA", "SUMMA", "SUMMER", "СУММ"

Last November 2012, Version 3 was released for public testing. The latest version is the first using an offline equation rendering solution that has been developed internally by CodeCogs, specifically for Microsoft Windows. Again no versions for the Mac Office are planned, though CodeCogs mentioned on their forum "we are looking for solution for Mac Office - but will wait to see the functionality of Office 2013 first". CodeCogs state that their off-line implementation can also be used to render normal LaTeX, with it supporting about 98% of the Mathematical Latex standard. Since Excel Render is no longer reliant on a web-connection, it is naturally faster. Further enhancements to this add-in include a Number Find and Text Find capability.



Basic operation






Excel Render can be used in a variety of purposes, but at the most basic level, the Add-in simply:
 * displays the value being used by each variable within a formula
 * displays the exact cell reference uses in the formula. This will typically just display the usual excel formula in a graphical form, but where Excel cells are named [add reference] then this feature converts the 'names' back to A1 style cell reference.
 * display appropriate names for the variables. The names used to label a variable are usually derived from the text label placed to the left of the cell, but where this is not available a variety the tool searches for viable alternatives

Generated equations can also be published to other Microsoft Office products, most other Windows applications and also websites.

Example Usage
The following figures illustrate the three main ways the same equation may be represented:
 * Excel Render using Cell References has rendering the selected cell using the absolute cell references.
 * Render using Cell Names has renders the selected cell by using the cell or range names specified in the Excel workbook/
 * Excel Render is using Cell Values has renders the selected cell using the numeric or text values from the cell specified.

External Link
Codecogs Website