Shared Workbook Setup Guidance

[Guest]

First, much thanks to all the great people who have helped me so far . . .
Tom Ogilvy, Dave Peterson, Frank Kabel among others . . . : )

I am considering setting up a shared workbook for our unit supervisors on a
shared drive. The workbook would be a simple list of answers to questions
(yes/no type questions), as they audit information in patient's charts. I
think that this would be easy enough via the "shared workbook function."

I plan to have the supervisors enter their data via a User Form that I will
create. I want to ensure that all information is entered in a standard way.

After they update the main list (data base), I plan to move this information
to a read-only spreadsheet that uses pivot tables and graphs to break down
the data into useful information for their review. This way I hope to get
around the "no pivot table" limitation that shared workbooks have.

If any of you good folks have similar experiences with shared workbooks in a
similar situation, I would love to hear how you did it and what problems you
encountered.

Specifically, what methods did you use to update the shared workbooks? Do
you use a button on a userform that invokes a macro? Do you have your users
just save the workbook and use Excel's native shared workbook function?

Also, how do you handle multiple users entering data simulataneously? I
really want to avoid any use of the conflict resolution routine that Excel
uses. I just want each user's info to be posted to the bottom of the
spreadsheet.

Thanks so much for all the good advice I receive from this Discussion Group.

WillRn

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't think I've seen anyone actually recommending using shared workbooks. I
stay away from them. There's lots that can't be done inside shared workbooks.
And there have been lots of posts that suggest never using them.

I don't have any experiences (positive or negative) with them to offer any valid
opinion.

But lots of people who ask questions like this get answers to use a database
program (like Access) that's made for multiple updaters.

If you know Access (I don't) or have access to an Access user <bg>, you might
want to pick their brains and see if what you want to do is possible.

And you could post a question or two to the Access newsgroups.

(I don't think they're nearly as friendly <bg>, but I bet the don't bite (real
hard)!)

Good luck,

 

[Guest]

Thanks again for the advice. My trouble is that none of my users (besides
myself) have Access on their computers. And my understanding is that anyone
that appends data to the database must have Access as well. Everybody has
Excel however so it is about the only choice I have at the moment.

I will try posting on the Access website (after I've had my shots <bg>) and
see if they can offer any work arounds to the having Access on every machine
issue.

Thanks,

WillRn