database selection

[WinterDeere]

Is the spreadsheet constantly breaking the biggest problem?

It's definitely an annoyance. I can usually fix it with just a few minutes, but it can really frustrate other users, and hose things up when they try fixing on their own.

The reality is there are no problems, until Excel's built-in intelligence "fixes" them. Things like named ranges inside of tables, which work fine when the document is not opened, get automatically reformated to relative ranges inside of a named table... which don't work when the referenced file is not opened. Totally stupid stuff, that never caused any problem on older versions of Excel, but now routinely breaking themselves on more recent versions.

Getting the whole system away from Excel is a foregone conclusion. I'm just tired of finding ways to make it work beyond its intended purpose.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I've used Google sheets for projects like that. They allow multiple people to view/edit the sheet at the same time and you can set permissions on sheets. It would be an evolutionary step from Excel.

They also have a scripting language that is very useful.