How to display data

Hi mnemz,

I'm glad you asked this question - a lot of people don't realise the importance of structuring your data correctly to get the most from it.

Ideally, each input should have a new line, but your categories like Age etc, shouldn't be repeated each line. A better idea is to have a sheet called "Details" where you would store the ages of your [students?]

Name Age
------- ----
Bob 10
Jane 8
Steve 13

Then you would have another sheet called "Pets" and it would go as follows:

Name Pet
------ -----
Bob Hamster
Bob Cat
Bob Dog

Then another sheet called "Awards" (the awards are for the student, right? Not the pets?)

Name Award
------- --------
Bob 100% Attendance
Bob Student of the month

The advantage of laying it out like this is that you can easily get the mean age of the class using the "Detail" tab, and using a Pivot Table, you could get the total number of pets in the class using the "Pets" table, or a run down of all the students with 100% attendance etc.

Consistency in naming the students (this is really the 'primary key' - the data that links all the sheets) needs to be maintained - You should ensure you spell the students' names correctly in each of the sheets to be able to link them later

Thanks,
Duncan