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Sun 18 Jan, 2004 10:16 am
I often use Works 2000 spreadsheets, but wonder if the database would be more helpful in the following case:
A list of medications, for whom prescribed, by whom prescribed, why prescribed, ordered from local drugstore, ordered from mail-order pharmacy, number of refills available, date of each refill, prescription number, ordered by mail or ordered by phone, cost.
I want to be up to date with the need for each refill. The timing is not easy, since some are renewed prescriptions and a couple of weeks may have to be allowed because the form must be mailed. Others are refills which can be picked up at the pharmacy after a phone call. Others can be refilled by phone, but a week must be allowed.
If I use the spreadsheet I can easily sort by whatever category I need. I know I can do it also in the database, but does the database give me a better overall look at each prescription? This is a lot of information, and even using small type and landscape orientation it almost certainly wouldn't fit across a single page. This is one reason I am considering the database program.
I think it may boil down to all info in one item in one place, or all info about one category in one column.
I am comfortable with the spreadsheet, but have never used the database. This, of course, may count for something. I enjoy experimenting, however, and if anyone has a suggestion that would tip the balance toward one program or the other, I'd like to hear it.
Seems like a database with a custom gui would be the ideal solution especially if you have a large amount of data. A lot of work to setup but much cleaner when finished. I'm not familiar with Works but Access would accomplish that.
Spreadsheet or database
Is Access a separate program requiring new software? I know information from Access can be transferred to Word, but I don't have the whole Office suite.
Access can be bought separately. It is also a part of the MS office suite, but only if you get Office Pro, which is way expensive. For what it's worth, excel seems easier to learn.
Access is a separate program, but it's probably similar to the Works databases... I used MS Office at work for years, and long ago when I first got a computer with Works on it I thought it was similar, but not as useful to me. I wanted to be able to work at home the way I did at work, so I got Office at home too... This is probably still true.
In Access (or the Works database), you'd set up your data in tables (maybe one for each person, or perhaps all the info in one big table), then create custom views, choosing only the columns that showed what you needed, like "Prescriptions expiring in less than two weeks" or "Prescriptions for so-and-so" or "All medicines for heart conditions" -- whatever you needed.
Spreadsheet or database?
Thank you both. I think I'll try to handle it with Works, since I probably wouldn't have much, if any, further use for either Access or Excel. I don't usually have such complex info to enter, and I doubt that the expense of a new program would be worth it.
I think Wy's suggestion of setting it up as a table in Works and then using the columns as needed is probably what I will do. I just wish that I could get it all in across one landscape sheet, but I think the type would have to be unreadably small to manage that. I guess I could figure some logical way to divide the info and make more than one table.
It's not so much that I have a great deal of data for each heading, just that I have a lot of headings.
Thanks again.
Spreadsheet or database?
Thank you both. I think I'll try to handle it with Works, since I probably wouldn't have much, if any, further use for either Access or Excel. I don't usually have such complex info to enter, and I doubt that the expense of a new program would be worth it.
I think Wy's suggestion of setting it up as a table in Works and then using the columns as needed is probably what I will do. I just wish that I could get it all in across one landscape sheet, but I think the type would have to be unreadably small to manage that. I guess I could figure some logical way to divide the info and make more than one table.
It's not so much that I have a great deal of data for each heading, just that I have a lot of headings.
Thanks again.
Access would work fine for this, you will need to set up a master listing by person with additional ones detailing medication and ordering information.
You can then draw these bits of information together and get a result that looks like a spreadsheet, but is the combined outputs of all your listings. It is easy then to organise the list by a date input, ie if today is --/--/-- then display all entries with this date as next expected.
Access is a very powerful tool when used in concert with all the other MS Office products.
If you have to ask, you don't need a database.
Sorry, I don't mean to be flip, but the bottom line is, what you're describing is essentially a spreadsheet that you would filter or not as needed, and hide or unhide the columns you want to see.
But a database? No, you don't need one for this kind of information. If, though, you needed to show a lot of complicated information, over several rows of data (I mean something like over 50,000 rows of data), then you should be considering a database. Works will be just fine for your purposes.
PS Learning databases is not easy. It involves learning how data in various tables relates, and making sure that the data can interrelate. E. g. how an employees table relates to a departments table and how they both relate to a job descriptions table, etc. What you're working on could all be put together under one "prescriptions table", and you could just view the data differently by, like I said, filtering what you see.
Spreadsheet or database
Thanks, jespah. No, you weren't flip (that's what the nuns always accused me of being when I was in grade school!), you were 100% right. It's like the guy who asked J.P. Morgan the price of his yacht and was told that if he had to ask, he couldn't afford it.
I've been trying different sizes of type and columns and one way or another, the spreadsheet will be organized.
Ok, but you are going to be entering a lot of duplications. I can give you a concrete example:
I did a simple database to index seminar papers at work, these were legal publications and quite important to the staff who frequently wanted to identify papers by particular people. I recall that there ended up being more than 700 individual papers with around 3-5 authors involved.
Now I needed an entry for each individual, and I didn't want to fill in a spreadsheet with Person A/Title Y, Person B/Title Y, Person C..etc. I created a separate authority listing of names (about 160, with the form of the name I wanted to avoid misspelling when entering them). OK, all I had to do then was make an entry for a particular title, then just match this entry against the identifier for the names). So, I only had to type the name up once, in a spreadsheet you will have to add it manually for each separate item.
A spreadsheet looks simpler, but as you are required to refine information for discrete units (person, medication, order information, times) it becomes more and more difficult to keep track of. I taught my self the basics of Access, using the manual supplied.
But you can still do this with a spreadsheet (or, at any rate, with Excel). Once a name is entered into a column, you can right-click the next cel below it and select "choose from list" and a list will appear of everything you've entered into that column. Instant correct spelling.
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