Multiple references

[Guest]

I'm struggling with designing a spreadsheet. I am cataloging quotes referred
to in various speeches and organizing them by topic.

My columns look like this:

Topic Quote Original Reference LDS Reference

My problem is two fold. First when I have the same quotation referenced by
two different speakers. Duplicating the original reference seems redundant
but is it necessary for recording the raw data.

The second problem is when a quote covers multiple topics. If something
refers to both pride and weakness. I can't put both topics in the same cell
and filter for pride because it records pride, weakness as a single entry.

I am expecting this to get to over a thousand quotes and need my design to
support that much data so having three topics columns is a pain. Is that the
only way?

I've been through tutorials and looked everywhere and am still in a quandry.

Do I just record everything separate and then use various sorting methods
and pivot table to interpret the data?


HELP!!!!

 

[Guest]

It's seductive to use Excel for things like this, since Excel offers a
familiar and comfortable interface. However, you are describing a problem
that really MUST go into a database - think MS Access.

Within the database you would have (at least) 3 tables: one for the quotes'
text, one for the key words, and one for the citations/references. Common
between the three tables would be a column that uniquely identifies each
quote - call it QuoteID. So, the main Quotes table would have columns for:

QuoteID,
QuoteText,
OriginalReference

The KeyWords table would have 2 columns:

QuoteID,
KeyWord

The References table would have (at least) 2 columns,

QuoteID,
LDS_Reference

With these tables you add a unique quote once to the Quotes table, add as
many distinct keywords as you need to the Keywords table, and cite it as
often as appropriate in the References table. It is a simple matter then to
find every quote sharing the keyword pride, or that is marked with both pride
AND weakness

 

[Guest]

Thank you.

I was afraid of that answer but I think you are right

Christine