Excel gurus, please assist me?

[InOverMyHead]

I am new to Access and Excel. I seem to have forgotten how to do it. . I am in a bit of a pickle because my emplorer seems to think I already have the ability to just whip this together and I have not told them otherwise. So any help will be greatly appreciated.

Ok, firstly, they are using Access and Excel 2002 editions. This is a multimillion dollar company, but thats all they have on the computer they
alloted to the department in which I work. I'm not even sure which program would be best suited for what I'm doing, so I'm currently toggling
between both. Let's pretend we're talking about a car manufacturer quality control department. I'll describe a scenario that is similar to what I'm trying to accomplish.

Let's say a car comes off the mold and is ready for inspection. I have a clipboard and walk around the vehicle. Let's say the areas of concern are the DOORS, TIRES, WINDOWS, HOOD and TRUNK (in actuality I'm dealing with many more points). I'm looking for flaws of course, and on my clipboard I mark the flaws i.e, Doors: 5 (DS)Dents, 2 (CP)Chipped Paint, 7 (SC)Scratches, etc. Then I continue to the ROOF and mark 2 DEnts, 3 Chipped Paint, etc. In actuality in my inspection process, there are 17 parts I must inspect, looking for any and all of 24 flaws/defects. These are now needed to be entered into a computer for recording, and ideally analysis. What is wrong with each car, Where on the car are we finding the most flaws and how many of each. Ultimately I'd like to then see a graphical representation of the improvement in
manufacturing over time.

Currently, I have both a form in Access to enter the data, and a table in Excel. In excel I currently have the Columns representing each part I inspect i.e, Column A= Doors, Column B= Roof, etc. The rows are the vehicles themselves with the primary being a serial number. Now for the problem. Let's say I want to enter the data for the doors, and it has 6 (SC)scratches and 7 (DS)dents. In the cell I am currently entering
"SC,SC,SC,SC,SC,SC,SC,DS,DS,DS,DS,DS,DS,DS". Which I know is bassackwards for anyone who knows what they're doing, of which I am not one.

I have no idea how to structure the table(?) to accept entry so that I can quantify the entries without repetitive entries like above. I did think of putting DS7 but thought that would not be logical.. I don't know why. So I'm imagining that I have to have a sensical table(?) first for the foundation the data will ultimately reside in, and simply make an entry form off of that. Currently I have a mess.

I NEED HELP.

BTW, this is NOT actually anything dealing with cars, I just used that as an example that would translate easier. Also, when I mentioned viewing quality control "over time", the time is really just a few days. So any help would be really really really helpful. I'm sure there are some kind of templates out there that exist that can be adapted for my purposes, but I haven't been able to find them. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

InOverMyHead

[Paul]

Hi InOverMyHead, welcome to the forum.

Your post does not comply with Rule 8 of our Forum RULES. Cross-posting is when you post the same question in other forums on the web. You'll find people are disinclined to respond to cross-posts because they may be wasting their time solving a problem that has been solved elsewhere. We prefer that you not cross-post at all, but if you do (and it's unlikely to go unnoticed), you MUST provide a link (copy the url from the address bar in your browser)to the cross-post. Expect cross-posts without a link to be closed a message will be posted by the moderator explaining why. We are here to help so help us help you!

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420074

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Thank you.