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Increase efficiency and speed of your sap support tasks with the help of Microsoft Excel and VBA

Background SAP Tcode SM30, is a very widely used transaction. Many IMG activities are simply update of table views using SM30. For example MRP controller IMG activity is nothing but sm30 on sap table view V_T024D. Apart from IMG activities, most of the SAP installations use many custom tables which are maintained using SM30. usually, the volume of such IMG activities in a support environment is a few records. As mentioned earlier, the amount of  MRP controllers that needs to be created when a new plant is created is usually huge. Here comes the problem. Many medium sized companies use a couple of 100 mrp controllers. The same problem happens when the business wants to add a new MRP controller to all existing plants. This again is easily a couple of hundreds. Moreover MRP controller IMG activity is not a table control; it has to be added one by one. This trick explained in this blog is very useful and saves time if the number of records exceeds hundred. This is limited to inserting new
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LSMW Tip

This tip is very useful for Master Data LSMWs that updates many fields. Usually it happens that during a specific project we realise a need to update specific fields. We design these LSMWs in such a way that these values supplied in the input file is updated in the master file. Later on we try to reuse the LSMW for updating a subset if these fields. If we leave the values of other fields blank in the input file, depending on how the LSMW conversion rules were designed, the the master data will be updated with initial values. Common practice in many organisations is to create a new LSMW for the new set of fields. This is not required if the LSMW uses Direct Input. Direct input uses a special character to denote no value. The default is "/". This allows us to reuse the LSMW. Reformat the input text file and fill fields that are not to be disturbed with this character. For example if the LSMW is for updating the following fields 1. storage bin 2. picking area 3. reord
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Shipping Tab disappears in STO!

Another side-effect Scenario While creating STO, before saving change any detail in the shippin tab like delivery priority, shipping condition, shipping point. ( I have to say that the following behaviour is observed only when the STO is created by copying an existing STO from document overview) Behaviour After saving the STO, the new STO created, does not have Shipping details tab. Solution This is a side-effect caused by SAP notes 1259225, 1345615, 1515654. Solution is provided in note 1655101.
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Unlimited overdelivery tolerance flag is reset!

Haaaaa. I am back after after a looooooong break. I have decided to keep posting more regularly now :-). This one is what we usually face after the stacks. I like to call it PSM (Post Stack Misbehaviour). Sap Note 1580025 in Stack 10 caused a problem where by, any change to Purchase Order item (delivery date, schedule qty, Purchase order qty, price etc.), resets the unlimited over delivery tolerance flag. Usually the unlimited over delivery tolerance flag is defaulted from Inforec. This might create nasty issues for the business, where business might be expecting the GR to go through smoothly, it will end up in error.The probelm is solved by applying note 1644491.
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Why some customer exits are not showing up in dubug?

Recently I designed a code in customer exit mb_cf0001 to capture some info from material docs in to a custom table. I set a breakpoint in the code and omg! Debugger does not stop. After playing around a little bit, I found that this exit is taken in the update task. As it is very sensitive place (also very dangerous), the debugger stops here only if the update debugger option is on. This can be set from the debugger screen. How? Easy. Enter /h in the command window, to bringup the debugger screen. From settings menu this option can be set. Noooo still the breakpoints are not active. I do not know why? But that is what happens. The debugger stops at the first line of code in the update task. The breakpoints that were set in abap editor before executing this tcode do not work. To work round this issue, this is what I did. I created a breakpoint from the debugger to the fm. I thought I was stupid not to know this after so many years experience in sap. I was not alone. So this is for t
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Stock Differences in HU (Handling Unit)

This blog post might help you to solve the problem with these messages. HUGENERAL 017 Handling unit &1 has the status "goods issue posted", cannot be changed HUFUNCTIONS 251 No posting-relevant material items could be found Many times it happens that the standard functionality provided by SAP is not sufficient. IN HU if customisations have been done, it is possible that, you end up with some data inconsistancy. The worst part about this is that not much is available in SAP or even internet. I learnt these hard way. The solution might look very simple, but it has consumed quite a lot of tense days. This could be due to some MDE customisations also. The above messages might appear if you are trying to transfer HU from blocked to unrestricted or vice versa using VLMOVE. Or if you are trying to pick a HU from stock. What happened in my case is that the inventory stock was transferred to Blocked stock, but the HU was not updated. So, the following standard transactions gives
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How to use MS Word Mail merge to do mass updates in SAP

This article explains the step by step, a simple and effective trick to do mass updates/creations on SAP configurations. In many cases this can potentially save couple of days. Conceptually it is very simple. Many IT professionals know how to use mail merge. For an SAP consultant, BDC is not a news. This will explain the steps to create a BDC session using recording and mail merge. 1. Prepare the data First step is to prepare your data. It is easy to explain using an example. We will use IMG configuration for MRP Controller. We will use Name and telephone field of the MRP controller. The data to be created will be created as an excel sheet. Let us save this file as mrpc.xls Next step is to create the recording. Before proceeding, decide your naming conventions. This will help you in troubleshooting and analysis. We will be creating 3 files, The basic recording as a text file The mail merge document as a word document Finally the merged bdc session as a text file. I use
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