Need to Generate Consolidated report from relatively large Excel database I inherited.

Copper Contributor

As the head of a volunteer organization, one of the many tasks before me is to generate regular postings to the membership of an in-depth Membership Listing.

 

This listing has Names, Addresses, Telephone Numbers (Home & Mobile), Membership Type/Status, Current Rank in The Organization, Previous Stations Held in The Organization, Spouse Names, Birthdays, Anniversaries, Submarine Qualification Dates, Initial Submarine Qualification Boats, Eligibility Dates for Induction into Certain Clubs/Societies, etc.

 

The previous listing in MS Word was done in a two-column format and was sometimes difficult to read. I had been working on a Microsoft Access Database setup for this, but since I am the only Member with formal computer training and any idea of how to use a database, I was informed this would be a waste of time. (Most of the members are significantly older than I am, and I am nearly 70!)

 

I was provided with an Excel version of the Membership List by a Member that adapted the format of the Membership List of another organization he belongs to to our organization. It works great for recording the data. I have worked a lot with Excel, both in the Navy on submarines and at shore facilities and after my retirement when I worked in the civilian world as a Programmer and a Technical Writer. Even so, I never worked with Pivot Tables or Reports from Excel, only with providing data in a single Worksheet format.

 

I need to be able to combine all of the data from all of the Worksheets in the current organization Membership file into an Output Report that will be uniform and readable, regardless of how many Worksheets I include for the report.

1 Reply

@ChuckSrFTCS 

 

Well, lets see what we can do here. For context, since you mention your age as 70 and state that most of the members of the organization are older than that, I would fit right in: I am 80. Never formally trained in computers, but an avid user, especially of Excel.

 

So with that background done: you never actually ask a question in your post, although you do paint the picture pretty well of what's facing you. Since this is all very confidential information (private at any rate), I'm not going to ask to see copies of the data.

 

A question for you: is the final output of your efforts going to be a printed directory of some kind? If so, Excel makes a marvelous database source for Word's MailMerge function. The two are designed to work together, and you can format a nice, readable directory of members that way. Which is what I'd recommend (based on what you have described).

 

Another question: You mention multiple sheets that somehow need to be combined, so I'm wondering if they're all different in format themselves, perhaps containing the same data but arrayed differently, or if they're same data, same organization but broken apart by some independent variable like state of residence, type of membership, etc.  

  • If the latter--almost regardless, actually--I'd strongly recommend combining them into a singe worksheet as a single database table.......just use additional columns as needed to reflect the reasons they're currently in distinct sheets. For example, add a column for year of first membership if that's what is behind the separate sheets; or level of donation, if that's what's behind it.

With those as first responses, though, come back with your answers to my questions and we'll take it further.