Managing Data with Microsoft® Excel

Changing Horses

This chapter has taken a brief look at overworking functions, ineffective data orientation, codes versus labels, and flat file workarounds that try to manage relational structures. There are more problems that you've probably run into already—for example, managing multiple simultaneous users and working with data outlines instead of pivot tables. Subsequent chapters in this book deal with these issues in greater detail.

If this chapter leaves you with the sense that Excel is the wrong application for data management, it has misled you. Worksheet functions, transposed lists, code lookups, and other features are sensible, valuable tools for data management. Nevertheless, they can go wrong and often do. That happens usually, if not ...