Forum Discussion
Data help
I work for a company that tracks progress of our kids individually in spreadsheets. Each kid has 5 goals and we track them when they attend our programs and how often they perform the 5 different task. (to simplify).
Right now all that tracking goes into a data sheet on excel which then spit out a graph with the trend line if they improved on that goal or not.
Right now our issue is that we have to individually go into each kids chart, visually see if they are increasing or decreasing for each goal, and mark it down on an overall progress chart. We have over 500 kids so you can imagine this way takes a good bit of time.
We are looking to find a way to do this through a formula, but to be honest I dont even know where to start. It would look something like plugging in all the data for that goal and telling us if it increased or decreased over time.
I know it's as simple as looking at a graph, but for 500 kids there has to be an easier way to have it calculate increase/decrease from the number and automatically show up everyone in one spot.
or it's impossible, but any help would be much appreciated!
below is what a portion of our data looks like in the spread sheet.
1 Reply
It's hard even to know where to start. For one thing, you know what that picture shows, but it's not really clear to someone seeing it for the first time. Is it representative of what you have--a separate sheet like that--on each of the 500 individual kids in your program? And is it where you enter the data? Or is it some kind of output or summary display that then gets turned into a progress chart by that laborious process you speak of?
What you need probably isn't a formula so much as a whole revamping of how your collect and store the indicators--i.e., the raw data--of how they're proceeding in connection with the various goals.
Excel is really good at creating summary reports--whether tabular or graphic--but works far better when working with a clean database. That is counter-intuitive to people who are used to laying things out in a reporting format right from the start [which is what it looks like you have here, though that may be an incorrect interpretation].
Is it in any way possible to upload a representative sample of the actual workbook, different spreadsheets (if there are different formats or different parts to this whole)...after first removing any actual names of individuals? That would give us a better starting point than the image by itself. I'm sure there are people here who can help. What you face, though--and you realize this--is potentially a pretty massive task.
