Help / Advice needed please

[subseauk]

Hi all,

Originally this question was submitted in the Excel user group but a
suggestion was to contact Access as well as this may be a better method to
get where i want to go!!

i am looking for some help and advice regarding how to set up several
different worksheets to interact.
Basically i wish to create the following:
1. a worksheet that will show total run time in hours & minutes of work
carried out sometimes stretching over more than one day through midnight.
2. an inventory of parts that can generate a stores order form each week of
spares required that have reached a minimum level.
3. a worksheet for defects that has an entry for spares used that will
interact with the inventory sheet.
4. a stores order / received sheet that is generated by the inventory and
when received will update the inventory levels.
5. a maintenance sheet that can interact with the inventory sheet when
spares are used,

Pretty easy i guess if you are familiar with excel but as a beginner it
looks like a very formidable task.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Rgds
Kev

 

[Barry Gilbert]

You were probably sent to this group because Access is better suited for this
application than Excel. Access, being a relational database, will allow you
to relate records in each table to records in other tables. Excel's
worksheets model is basically flat; it takes a lot more work to get records
to relate to each other.

If you haven't used Access before, this might be a formidable task, but it's
certainly the right tool.

Barry

 

[Barry Gilbert]

You were probably sent to this group because Access is better suited for this
application than Excel. Access, being a relational database, will allow you
to relate records in each table to records in other tables. Excel's
worksheets model is basically flat; it takes a lot more work to get records
to relate to each other.

If you haven't used Access before, this might be a formidable task, but it's
certainly the right tool.

Barry

 

[Barry Gilbert]

You were probably sent to this group because Access is better suited for this
application than Excel. Access, being a relational database, will allow you
to relate records in each table to records in other tables. Excel's
worksheets model is basically flat; it takes a lot more work to get records
to relate to each other.

If you haven't used Access before, this might be a formidable task, but it's
certainly the right tool.

Barry

 

[Jeff Boyce]

To use Access (and get the benefit of its features/functions), you'll need
to change your mind set about your data. Access is a relational database,
and doesn't do its best if you feed it 'sheet data.

If you are willing to work your way up the learning curve, the first thing
you'll need to do is step back from how you've characterized your data ("a
worksheet that will show..."; "a worksheet for defects..."; ...).

Starting from scratch (paper and pencil work well for this), identify the
"entities" about which you wish to keep information. I'm guessing, from
your description, that this would include something like "Production", and
"Inventory" and "Maintenance" and maybe "Person". You are closer to your
situation ... what does your list of entities look like?

Next, what pieces of data do you want to keep about each of your entities?
If you need to keep info about Persons, I'll guess you want to know their
names (FirstName, LastName). Note that info strictly about a person has
NOTHING to do with which production run s/he might be assigned to.

Finally, how are your entities related to each other? Can one person be
assigned to more than one Production run (think over the course of a year)?
Is there a one-to-many relationship, or many-to-many?

The entities will be your tables, and the data/attributes will be the fields
in those tables.

Identifying the relationships among the tables will help you and Access
maintain data integrity.

This is a crucial first step in making good use of Access. Take a look at
"normalization" as a topic.

Best of luck!

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP