So I'm in the process of writing a Visual Basic macro in Microsoft Excel. One component of the procedure I'd like to write stumps me, and I'd like some advice.

My company "makes widgets". Each "type of widget" is associated in our internal database with a record locator (five alpha characters). Our company website can also use that record locator to pull up a webpage specifically dedicated to that widget. In addition to the webpage itself, the website also creates an expanded URL which contains additional information about that widget.

I'd like my macro to take a list of record locators, open up the company website related to each specific widget, pull back the expanded URL, and do some text management with the URL to populate other parts of the spreadsheet.

For example, if my record locator is "ABCDE", my macro would go to the website, "http://www.widgets.com/ABCDE". The site then redirects to an expanded URL: "http://www.widgets.com/whole-bunch-of-data-about-the-ABCDE-widget". I'd hope to write a macro which pulls back the expanded URL and does some magic with the "whole bunch of data" part.

I've been told that the MSHTML library would be useful for a project of this type. I've been able to connect my spreadsheet to that library, but then I'm not sure what to do with it. Any thoughts?