Joined the Excel Forum to try to improve the learning curve

[brerarnold]

My name is Dr. Bruce Arnold. I am a clinical social worker/psychotherapist. I am Team Leader for an Intensive In-Home Therapy team with Easter Seals-UCP of NC/VA. I use Excel to keep track of important information about my team's case load. Someone kludged together a spreadsheet a few years ago. It was slapped together, uses tons of memory, requires the same data to be entered over and over, and is a visual/graphic atrocity. I'm working to improve it. I've come a long way already, and my knowledge of Excel has improved immensely. BTW, I use Excel 2010 because that's what the IT guys installed. At first I wasn't crazy about the ribbon, but I've gotten used to it.

The main issue I have now is this: I want to enter each piece of data once, and once only. The same data is used in various places in various ways. The workbook has multiple spreadsheets to accommodate this. I've got most of the issues worked out quite satisfactorily. I'd say the project is about 95% done. Like so many projects, it is that last 5% that kills you. LOL.

So I am hoping that, by searching around on this forum and asking pertinent questions, I can get over the hump and finish this thing up. Truth is, if I had to just go ahead and use what I have now, it would already be twice as good as what I started with, and the issues that remain might not bother anyone much. They might not bother me much. But I know that the vision I have of what can be done is achievable. It has become a personal challenge.

My prior experience is more in database programming than spreadsheet programming. I haven't used Access, but have some experience with Filemaker Pro, the OpenOffice database app, and especially HanDBase, a remarkably capable relational database originally written for the old Palm Pilot. If I was doing what I am doing in one of these, I'd be done by now. But IT didn't put any of those on our computers. They gave us Excel, and I pretty much have to use what my colleagues have available.

I may end up having to learn VBA, and that could be fun, but woo -- the last time I did any real programming, it was in Turbo Pascal, which will tell some of you what an old fart I am and how long it's been.

Guess that's enough for now. Hello, world.

[arlu1201]

Welcome and nice to know about you.