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Subject:Catalogs in Excel? From:"Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Thu, 21 Jan 1999 09:08:48 -0700
Alecia Lee is <<...creating a library/index for the marketing
magazines at my company. The magazines are used for marketing
research. I was wondering if any of you have any experience creating
something like this in Excel 97.>>
While I'm sure there's some clever way to do this, the next line of
your message holds the key:
<<What we need is a database that includes a list of the title,
issue, and a brief summary of the significant articles of each
magazine.>>
Yes, what you need is a _database_ (something designed for storing
and sorting data), and Excel is a spreadsheet (a number cruncher),
not a database. If you've got Excel, you've probably also got
MSAccess (they usually come together as part of MSOffice), and that's
a better choice for the job. More simplistically, you could simply
type this information into a word processor file and use the "search"
function to do the searching for you. You can produce something
far more sophisticated and useful by creating separate section
headings (or even files) for separate topics, and store all related
articles under the appropriate topic, with cross-references to other
files and topics, but now you've got a full-scale indexing problem
to solve (the sort of thing librarians do for a living). The wordpro
solution is less flexible than using a database, but for simple
needs, it's really simple to create and equally simple to use.
<<What is the best way to approach this kind of indexing as well as
make it easy to access for the employees...>>
"Know thine audience!" How will people want to use the software? If
they'll simply want to search the wordprocessor file by scrolling
down until they find the right article, the wordpro solution will
work just fine. If at some point 10 years down the road someone will
want to find "all articles about MSExcel written between Jan. and
Dec. 1999 that discuss macro programming but not macro viruses", then
you'll need a database, and you'll need to create a comprehensive
list of keywords for use in that database so people can do advanced
searching.
My advice: If this will be a long-term project, and any significant
portion of your audience has sophisticated searching needs, get an
appropriate database, hire a good indexer, and store indexed
(keyworded) descriptions of each article in the database.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
