Workbook usage or Database usage assistance

I am wondering if anyone could give me opinion which to use, Excel or Access. I have been using Excel for quite some years & the information I needed to enter were minimal. However, information has increased & usability by more than one user at same time has changed. I currently have Excel files by year with 12 workbooks (1 per month) with 5-6 worksheets within the workbook to track intake information & who I gave the work to. Currently 2-3 individuals access the file & data enter but now we are accessing the same worksheets so some data overrides if simultaneous entry occur. I also need to be able to assign work & not have another user override that entry in the cell. I would like to also have a master sheet & have it copy information to another sheet for a user to exclusively utilize & edit by that user only. Need to create reports showing who the work was assigned to & what is their status of work by viewing their exclusive sheet. Is any of this possible in Excel or would it be better to start learning Access?

Hi Sunshine,

From what you've described, I think your best bet is Access. Especially if you want to limit things based on a user(s) and still allow multiple users to be entering data at the same time.

However, that being said, you could design the front end of your application using Excel and link all of the data to an Access back end database rather than using Excel as a backend. Then you would just need to give each user their own personal front end. Otherwise, Access front and back end is what I think you would need.

I hope it helps.

I concur with Beach Rock's assessment based upon the information you have provided. If you decide to go the Access route, make sure that you normalize all your data for a relational database. Click on the link in my signature block to learn about normalization if you are not familiar.

Alan

This may be informative and helpful

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6...abase-with-vba