J
JMF
Here's a question for anybody who has the time and interest:
I'm doing a little application to track my time on projects.
Now, Excel is fantastic for doing a monthly "timesheet." Like this:
1 2 3 ... 31
T1
T2
T3
...
Tn
Across the top the 31 days of the month, down the rows each task you might
work on. Put the number of hours you worked in the cells.
It gives you a complete overview of the whole month, shows you immediately
what the totals are, allows you to adjust, etc. It's perfect.
Where Excel begins to break down, of course, is when you want to start doing
queries on time spent on a single task over many months, and so on and so
forth. You begin to have to start bending over backwards in Excel to do
things that are straightforward in Access.
And so I want to have it in Access. Simple table:
Task, Hours, Date
(plus the other tables necessary to make it all work)
But I no longer have the great presentation that Excel gives me for data
entry, and even the presentation is no longer Excel-like.
Ideally I'd like to have both the conceptual world of Excel, for data entry,
and the conceptual world of Access for querying and the rest.
Now, I suppose one solution could be to do the entry in Excel and then
import into Access. Certainly that's an option, although even that could get
awkward.
But I have a suspicion that a REAL expert in Access, who really knows how to
make and use Forms and Reports, could come pretty close to giving me my
"Excel conceptual world" for entry and presentation. I'd be interested in
knowing whether this suspicion is correct and where I might direct my
studies of Forms and Reports to attack the problem early.
In any case, I'd be interested in comments!
Thanks,
John
I'm doing a little application to track my time on projects.
Now, Excel is fantastic for doing a monthly "timesheet." Like this:
1 2 3 ... 31
T1
T2
T3
...
Tn
Across the top the 31 days of the month, down the rows each task you might
work on. Put the number of hours you worked in the cells.
It gives you a complete overview of the whole month, shows you immediately
what the totals are, allows you to adjust, etc. It's perfect.
Where Excel begins to break down, of course, is when you want to start doing
queries on time spent on a single task over many months, and so on and so
forth. You begin to have to start bending over backwards in Excel to do
things that are straightforward in Access.
And so I want to have it in Access. Simple table:
Task, Hours, Date
(plus the other tables necessary to make it all work)
But I no longer have the great presentation that Excel gives me for data
entry, and even the presentation is no longer Excel-like.
Ideally I'd like to have both the conceptual world of Excel, for data entry,
and the conceptual world of Access for querying and the rest.
Now, I suppose one solution could be to do the entry in Excel and then
import into Access. Certainly that's an option, although even that could get
awkward.
But I have a suspicion that a REAL expert in Access, who really knows how to
make and use Forms and Reports, could come pretty close to giving me my
"Excel conceptual world" for entry and presentation. I'd be interested in
knowing whether this suspicion is correct and where I might direct my
studies of Forms and Reports to attack the problem early.
In any case, I'd be interested in comments!
Thanks,
John