Access will give you the advantages of a database, relational tables et al,
which with all of the different data types you mention, could be very
useful. Access is actually two products, a database and a data
query/analyser. You could use Access per se to do everything, but you might
find it simpler to create the data in an Access database, and use Excel to
query that database to pull back the data into Excel reports. This would
work well for you coaches as well, their query could be specific to the data
they are interested in, no more deleting data.

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HTH

Bob


(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)



"Jo4321" wrote in message
news
I kind of crossposted over on the Access forums, but I need some opinions.

I'm in a new job with a college sports team and there is an existing
roster
of team members on Excel. It contains all the usual info name, address,
ssn, position played, hght., weight.. etc. There are other spreadsheets
with
team member with other info, such as home of record, parents names, summer
address, etc. There are other spreadsheets with
possible recruits with similar information. The coaches are familiar with
the excel format.

I'd like all the info to be in one place. But it seems that if I put it
all
into one spreadsheet, it is going to have a heck of a lot of fields and
would
be unweldy to view. Plus the possible recruits would be mixed in with the
current team members (even though I'd have a field that could be checked
"team or recruit".

Is there a way to connect the various separate excel spreadsheets somehow
so
that they'd work together?
Or is the only way to have these connections by
using a database program such as access?

I use the spreadsheets to generate correspondence, roster lists for the
coaches, labels, nametags, etc. I also use it for reports (names of
recruits
who visited etc),The coaches will often use the info by using "save as"
and
then deleting the stuff they don't need and adding stuff they do. ( One
example, the "lifting coach" will copy the names and heights and weights
and
then add his own columns for their workouts.)

If I switch this stuff over to access, will what I gain in flexiblity be
lost in the coaches ability to manipulate the data themselves? (I could
do
the same thing that the lifting coach does by using a directory merge with
word, but the coaches aren't as familiar with mail merge as I am.) There
are
many other examples of times when the coaches would need to grab this
data,
so I'm wondering if I ought to just leave it all in excel.

So what are the pros/cons access/excel in my situation?

TIA,
Jo