Excel, Access or other?
Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2017 12:42 pm
I have a large spreadsheet I use at work to manage a project I'm doing which isn't that user friendly when you need a quick overview of what's going on and how data is related, and was wondering the best way to proceed.
Each row is a location of an install, with the columns being various information, so you have general contact information having about half a dozen columns, pre install information taking up a dozen, equipment of the install taking up a few, invoice and PO information taking up a few, plus it also keeps track of the current status of that location since we deal with dozens and dozens simultaneously all at different stages, some with unique issues that need to be accounted for too.
I have other sheets which reference the first one to show only a few columns so I'm able to easily condence related information to fit on one screen, but this means these sheets are essentially read only, and there are limitations to how useful this is since if I re-sort the first page I need to re-setup these pages.
Problems keep happening, or take longer to solve than they should, because data isn't linking together well enough so we can't back trace things that happened months prior precisely and quickly, such like if a location have received two separate shipments of equipment on different dates and which PO and which invoice they were attached to.
I'm thinking an actual database is the way to go, and access is available to me but I was hoping for a bit of advice before I potentially go down the wrong path.
Each row is a location of an install, with the columns being various information, so you have general contact information having about half a dozen columns, pre install information taking up a dozen, equipment of the install taking up a few, invoice and PO information taking up a few, plus it also keeps track of the current status of that location since we deal with dozens and dozens simultaneously all at different stages, some with unique issues that need to be accounted for too.
I have other sheets which reference the first one to show only a few columns so I'm able to easily condence related information to fit on one screen, but this means these sheets are essentially read only, and there are limitations to how useful this is since if I re-sort the first page I need to re-setup these pages.
Problems keep happening, or take longer to solve than they should, because data isn't linking together well enough so we can't back trace things that happened months prior precisely and quickly, such like if a location have received two separate shipments of equipment on different dates and which PO and which invoice they were attached to.
I'm thinking an actual database is the way to go, and access is available to me but I was hoping for a bit of advice before I potentially go down the wrong path.