Data Entry and Display problem

[brimurr]

I have a problem that I am not sure is suited to Excel.

I want to record the number of hours that each member of a family spend
together for a week. This involves all the combinations of the people.

I have started by creating a worksheet for each person. Listing all the
combinations of people and a column for each day of the week

So for a 4 person family we would have a worksheet tab for the mother
and her relationships.

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Mother
Mother+Father
Mother+Child1
Mother+Child2
Mother+Father+Child1
Mother+Father+Child2
Mother+Father+Child1+Child2

Now if I create a worksheet tab for the father there is some
information that I can use i.e. Mother+Father time should be the same.

I am sure this is not the best way of doing it. I am sure I need to
separate the way the hours are entered from the way they are displayed,
but I'm not sure how.

Can anyone provide a suggestion.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I have no idea where you're going with this, so you can just ignore this if you
want.

I've found it's better to make the input as granular as possible with one row
per entry.

And I'd try to put all my data into one sheet.

So I'd have the same stuff in column A, but in column B, I'd put the date/day
and hours in column C.

So the section that starts with Mother could look like:

Grouping Day Hours
Mother Mon
Mother+Father Mon
Mother+Child1 Mon
Mother+Child2 Mon
Mother+Father+Child1 Mon
Mother+Father+Child2 Mon
Mother+Father+Child1+Child2 Mon
Mother Tue
Mother+Father Tue
Mother+Child1 Tue
Mother+Child2 Tue
Mother+Father+Child1 Tue
Mother+Father+Child2 Tue
Mother+Father+Child1+Child2 Tue


I _think_ that if you have the data entered this way, you'll be able to work
with it easier (but you'll want to think about it before you implement it).