Access or Excel?

[gemma-the-husky]

I wish I could show you the Excel file for one of the large jobs we are currently doing. Its a multimillion dollar job (for just the lighting!) and my god, the workbook is a massive pain to navigate and find things. This job will last for years and it will only get worse.

Just to recap on something I've mentioned before, (maybe in this thread) - the difference with a database is that you don't have to search the whole database to find stuff. In fact you virtually never see the whole caboodle. You have to structure the design so you are sure you can't lose data in orphan records and structures. Once you do that, and you know that you can reconcile the total expenditure stored in the database - you can then have confidence that if you extract just the labour costs, or just the costs for Jan 2021, the figures you see will be reliable. Then you don't have to look for them. They just appear.