[mso] Re: Database or Spreadsheet
- From: "Katherine Driskell Felts" <subscriptions@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 07:22:50 -0500
Excel does it more easily! That's the only thing. It is more obvious,
you can see the sigma symbol on your tool bar, you hit it, you
highlight, you're done.
You can cut and paste easily in excel--haven't yet figured out how to do
that in access.
I'm a better than average (non-expert) excel user that can get excel to
calculate and keep track and compile error free (half the time when I do
math, 2 + 2= 42). I've taken census research on the geographic areas
relevant to my work and compiled percents of populations under various
levels of poverty in various cities counties and statewide and then
compared by age and by family type. The results were impressive if I do
say so myself, and I cut and pasted formulas the whole way through.
Then, I did all these graphs so that even an allocations panel of
business people could see that there are children in need of our
services in our town.
I haven't taken a class to learn what I know in Excel. I've just
figured that it should be there somewhere and I'll find it. (that and
mso freelists, thanks guys for the Countif help, I use it all the time
now). I've asked a few questions here about access and your kind
patient answers haven't made a darn bit of sense! In fact, rather than
manually entering over 100 records into the form that wouldn't tab the
way I wanted, I exported to Excel and cut and pasted then imported back
in. To do mail merges from access to word I've had to go through Excel.
I'm sure there is an easier way, I just haven't found it. Word and
Access don't seem to want to talk directly to each other. I never have
found the little sigma button so I can figure my LYBUNTS and SYBUNTS and
have a field on my contact page telling me total giving for 02 and 03
and 04 so far.
Thing is, Excel wouldn't do that so great either. The one to many kind
of thing. Some folks write one check a year (poor fundraising
performance!) some write a few. One donor, one or many donations, how
do you keep track of that without a database? You can't really. The
sad thing is that the last person in my job put this information into
access but used it like excel--one column for 02 giving in which there
were up to 5 numbers separated by semicolons.
My problem is, I haven't figured out how to effectively and efficiently
keep track of that WITH a database.
The other thing is that Access isn't in the Mac's Office suites.
Kathie
Katherine Driskell Felts,
Executive Director
Blooming Prairie Center
Deep Roots, Bright Futures, Unlimited Horizons
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