Forum Discussion
Recipe nutrition database/pivot table
Im not new to excel but very new to tables, databases, and pivot tables. My knowledge base is very limited on what Ive done so far. I am trying to develop a way that I can choose certain recipes whic...
Ill try these when I get home. Lets say I have 20 recipes. I add the recipe name above each value. Then do I highlight all the cells at once to create pivot table? Or do I have to make multiple tables?
Not above each value. A new column, not a new row. I'm recalling that you said at the start of this thread that you're not new to Excel, but are new to tables and pivot tables. The latter, the Pivot Table, was first introduced during the era of Lotus 1-2-3. It became a wildly popular tool, for good reason; it could summarize data in a useful manner without the use of any formulas. To this day, one of my most useful personal Excel workbooks relies on the Pivot Table--it summarizes by month and budget category all of our personal income and spending, whether in checking accounts or credit cards. I'm not opposed to Pivot Tables.
But as I said, I'm not at all convinced that Pivot Table is the right tool for your purpose. There are other tools, tools introduced in the last few years, that provide much of the same kind of summarization, with even greater flexibility and customization. So please don't get fixated on that specific tool as what you need.
As it happens, I'm not totally clear on your purpose.
Maybe you could back up and explain the big picture here. Are you a chef? Do you manage a restaurant and desire to be able to accompany each menu item with salient nutritional details? If so, how detailed does that need to be; how precise?
What have you been envisioning as the purpose for the database you have? I can see using it to calculate (as I've hinted at) nutritional info for a dish, but at that higher level, rather than requiring the highly specific data on each ingredient IN the dish (although that might be a useful step, to be able to validate the outcome if asked).
You would do well to do some research on how Excel Tables work, and/or on database design. Here is one resource to start with. And YouTube has a lot of videos you might find useful.
The basic design is important, vital in fact. Don't try to get to the end product (which is where the Pivot Table or something else might come in to play) before building a solid foundation. A good part of my professional career involved designing a major database for the corporation where I worked. I retired over twenty years ago, but still have a good grasp of most of the basic concepts. If you can hold off on trying to move too fast toward the end here, and back up to describe in plain old conversational language what the information is you need to assemble (the input end, raw data end) and then what the output will be used for, then we can start designing. Excel, like other powerful tools, can do wonders; mis-used, it can create havoc.
I've attached a document on design; an old document, but one worth keeping around for reference, all the more so the more important the workbook you're trying to create.
- https://1drv.ms/x/c/5c44253842f5d23a/ERuw6QnAvj9FuyKVpA797lEB-pS6JI8SnN_IZt8lkLrsoA?e=AWzO7y
This will get me by once I input all the data. I knew it would be something simple like you explained for just putting the same name of the recipe in each row for its ingredients. Now that I can see how this can work I still want to look at the other things you suggested. Thank you for your help Thanks, that's a helpful description of the context. I take all that to mean that this could be an informal record keeping solely for your personal use. In that case, you might look for nutrition tracking spreadsheets that others have already created. Weight Watchers might have something (a friend profited from their disciplines toward losing weight, and i know some of it involved tracking things as you're doing).
In other words, you don't need to re-invent the wheel, although it is fun to tweak and improve what others have done,
- No not a chef. Im a maintenance manager that dabbles with excel to show information to my crew with graphs. Someone at one point created a pivot table that I use to see our downtime. I also like using excel to automate some math functions. This is a new realm for me in excel. What I would like to be able to do is pick what Im eating each day to make sure I dont go over daily values. So lets say Im going to the store. I pick what Im going to eat each day, check the values, and also know what I need to buy. We make most of our food from scratch. No boxed dinners and limit the amount of processed ingredients. Thats why the recipes would have the ingredients. I will be more than happy to use any tool that best suites this. That is why I reached out to ask. I very much appreciate your help. Ill look all these ideas over once I get home. You've provided a lot of information to go over.
