Need help with Excel spreadsheet

[Reeve]

Yeah, true. (I mean that's what the imgur link looked like, straight up pulling the data from the other worksheets).

As I'm a complete noob with anything web related; is Access really out of the question here? It would be so much better for his players to just query a database (with noob-friendly queries)

Yeah I don't know if there's a google docs for access, but this sort of entry is really made for a database.

Excel is really made for data modeling, not recordkeeping.

[Reeve]

You can't imagine the pain of having to design a worksheet for a client who is adamant that he wants to keep his records on excel (buy a fucking database solution you cheapskate, I'm an accountant, not a programmer!)

I live in Excel. I have a very complex 48 sheet workbook that I built for modeling pricing for international seismic exploration contracts. It probably has at least a million formulae in it that I need to be able to adjust on the fly as needed. People have been trying to put this model into a database for at least a decade now, and every attempt has failed.

There are a lot of things databases are good for, but there's a reason that complex financial modeling is often done in Excel. It's what Excel is made for. There are even competitions out there for the best models built in Excel.

But yeah, the OP's issue is exactly what databases are made for.

[Reeve]

My issue is, it's a RAM hog. No question though, it can do magic.

My work machine has 16 GB of RAM. I usually get by OK, though there are some tasks that seem to be CPU intensive. Recalculating a data table with 3,000 option variables off a workbook with as many formula dependencies as this tends to have can take 5-10 minutes.

[Reeve]

I can't think of anything that Excel can do that a database can't do, though. Hm.

The only issue being that you need a developer of some variety to actually filter, extract and present the data from the database. Excel just lets you make pretty pie charts with a click. :O



Maybe you just have garbo developers!

It's more to do with the ease and flexibility of Excel. When you want to make fundamental changes to how things are calculated in a database, you probably can't do it as quickly though such an intuitive GUI.

[Reeve]

Right, that's what I meant. Excel is pretty much a package all in itself. If you want to use a database and then let users interact with it, you'll probably need a developer of some variety to create all the desired apps/tools.

Right. Unfortunately, we can't afford to have a developer make changes for us every time we want to change how we're modeling a current bid.