Excel database: services and service providers

[RSS_202260]

At our small society, we have members, who both use and supply services. The software we use is ancient (UNIX), so I'm trying to extract data for use in Excel 2016.

To give an example of what I'm trying to do, let's say the services are lawn mowing, dog walking and house cleaning. Not all members supply all services.

Craig provides all three.

Mary only walks dogs.

John walks dogs and mows lawns.

I don't even know what this would look like in Excel, but effectively I'd like to be able to do two things...

1. Type/click on a member and see the list of services they provide e.g. input "Mary" to get the result "dog walking".

2. Type/click on a service title and see a list of members that provide them e.g. input "lawn mowing" to get the results John and Craig.

I don't even know how I would use a search engine to find the answer to this, so any help much appreciated!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

A very simple way is to have a small table which as only two columns:
Name Service

In the Name column you enter the name of a person and in the Service column you enter that person's service. Then if a person provides another service, add an additional row for that person. Enter the name in the name column and the service in the service column:
Name Service
Craig Lawn moving
Craig Dog walking
Craig House cleaning
Mary Dog walking
John Lawn moving
John Dog walking

Select any cell in this table and choose "Insert, Table" from Excel's menu.
Now you can use the filter drop-downs to filter for name, or to filter for service.

[#3]

Thank you very much! That's a nice neat solution and very simple to create. I really appreciate that you took the time to respond - having the data searchable like that will make my life much easier!

[#4]

Sorry, I replied to say thanks but it appeared as a separate post... thank you!