MS Office: Access

[John Charles]

Okay, I need to use this program and I've never used it before. The owner of the company has requested that I evaluate the year to date trending of my department.

Each month I submit, via email, a comprehensive report using Excel. I don't think Excel is efficient enough to format the data the way I've been asked to submit it. I think Access is my best choice, but only because I know it is a database.

The data will be numbers only. These numbers need to be mathematically manipulated to get the additional data I need. Do you think Access the best MS Program for this? If not, what program should I use?

If Access will work, where can I learn how to use it quickly?

[scotpgot]

I have fairly limited experience with Office (some, but not enough). If you're manipulating numbers, it still sounds to me like Excel is your best bet.

As I understand it, Access is a database program.

Let's say you've got a chicken farm, and you need to know how many eggs you have. I think Excel would be better for multiplying average egg count per day, if/then statements for temperature, rainfall varients (I don't know, just making stuff up there). Whereas Access is better for reading the database after the info. is collected. (Organize by chicken age, by month, by egg count, whatever.)

Someone may come along and say that's completely wrong, though. ;)

In the meantime, moving to Tech Help, you'll get better answers there, I'm pretty sure.

[jamiept]

OPie,

I would keep using Excel. Look into pivot tables.

[John Charles]

As far as i can tell, I can indeed create a report in Excel that will draw data from my monthly Excel reports and spit it out the way I need it. However, when I email that report, I believe it will no longer be able to draw from my monthly Excel reports because it won't find them on the recipient's computer.

Make sense?

[John Charles]

:bump:

[John]

A mailed database isn't going to be able to draw info from your local files any more than a spreadsheet will. You'll either have to stuff all of that data in a database, learn how to do it along the way, and then write an interface to display the data, or import your monthly stuff into an Excel workbook. I think Excel is your best bet for short-tracking the work.

[MaxPower]

Once you've got all the data pulled from your various other workbooks, you can "copy" and "paste special". This will take the numbers that are derived from either formulas or from imputs from other spreadsheets and change them into a plain ol' number. The only problem with this is that others won't be able to tell how you came up with that particular number unless you make a cell comment noting it's origin.

If this sound doable, click on the upper left top box of the spreadsheet and it should highlight the entire spreadsheet, then right click and select copy, then right click again and select paste special. Then place an checkmark in "Value" and hit ok.

[John Charles]

Very helpful.

:thankyous