Sometimes you might want to just physically move around a few wells on a container worksheet plate after the workbook has been built. You can do this if you go to one of the dependent variable containers, because when you drag and drop workbook cells, Excel cleverly updates all the formulas in the Flat Data table to take account the new position of the cells in your workbook. Now if you have a workbook which has several dependent variable worksheets, and you spend time reorganising the first one to get the exact layout you want, you don’t have to repeat the process for each dependent worksheet in turn. Instead, you can use the “Make Manual Plate Layout Global” function to select the worksheet you have altered and then propagate these changes across all the other dependent worksheets. In Figure 1 we have made changes to the dependent variable page “Cell Count” and now we wish to propagate these changes to the other pages.

Note if you want to exclude certain container workbook pages from being overwritten with your new manual plate layout, then simply type any text in the first cell of the worksheet (Cell A1) and that worksheet will not be altered by the propagating function. You can use this method if you have an experiment where you used different layouts on different microtitre plates that were dedicated to a particular experimental measurement.

Once you have built a Platemaker wizard container workbook, you might want to add, remove or rename one of its dependent data worksheets. You might think that the latter two operations are simple (it is very easy to rename a worksheet in Excel) but you should not do this using Excel. The reason is that Platemaker Wizard-built workbooks contain a complex Flat Data table and if you simply delete a worksheet, the Flat Data table will be left with a large number of cells containing invalid formulas. Therefore, if you want to perform any of these three options use the Platemaker Wizard function for this purpose. The function itself is self-explanatory, but briefly: select the option from the Platemaker Wizard menu and the menu of Figure 1 will be displayed. In the first dropdown menu all the possible worksheets that can be altered will be listed. Select the one you wish change. At this point the Delete key will become active. If you want to delete the page, them simply push this key now.

If you want Add or rename a page, then type the new name of the page in the “New Page Name:” field directly below the dropdown box. If you are going to add a page, it is always wise to also supply the new measured variable’s dimensions (Figure 2).

Once the New Page Name has been supplied, the Add key will enable and the Delete key will now change to a rename key. Obviously, at this point if you push the add key a totally new page will be added and its plate layout will be based on the Draq Intensity page whereas if you push the rename button then, in this example, the page Draq Intensity will be renamed to Death Intensity.

If you push the Cancel button while you are in the process of defining a new workbook (or modifying a template) the information that you have currently entered is saved to the Access database. Using this option reloads page 1 of the “Create New Data Entry Workbook” wizard with any information from the previous build attempt still in the relevant fields. This option is particularly useful if you require information from another workbook but forgot to open it or did not have it active when you started to define the new workbook build that requires this information. Annoyingly, even though you can gain access to an open workbook using the “Add buttons” provided throughout the wizard, only the workbook that was active when you started the “Create New Data Entry Workbook” can provide data to go back into the forms of the wizard as the dialogue box that allows you to return to the wizard is only accessible from a single open workbook.