MS Access experience?

[Master slacker]

Has anyone ever used MS Access to maintain equipment information? I am currently creating and maintaining an Excel spreadsheet with links to equipment specs, photos, maps, etc... I would like to have a simple interface where someone could just click a dropdown section, find the pump, and then choose in another area whether they want the pump curve, photo, spec sheet, etc...

Sure, it'll be just fine staying in Excel, but I'd like a simpler interface for when other need to peruse for information.

 

[engineergurl]

depending on how complex you have it set up, you can import the current excel file into access, and work off that to build a form and set up the relationships and stuff... but it depends on your end user on how effective it is. At my previous job, I spent a ton of time setting up a database to monitor a large number of projects progress and it was linked to different project folders and documents... unfortunatly, even though it worked great for us with the technical knowledge... our upper management never wanted to use it, so in the long run, they still came to us for everything (although we were able to produce the answers to their questions quickly)... eventually an employee turn over led to me simplifying our tracking to a dry erase board on the wall and requesting the techs to just save their files in the appropriate location because I got sick of maintaining a data base that never got used by anyone anymore...

My point is, see if others would really use it... if not, then you may be only doing it for your own self satisfaction...

 

[Master slacker]

it probably won't be used all that often and would end with an "atta boy" for me by me. With no Access experience, it'd be too much effort to learn and apply it for the lack of use that would be.

 

[MA_PE]

Did you know that you can put drop downs in Excel and retrieve information into a form based on that selection?

 

[Master slacker]

Yeah, after my last pointy-headed boss, I became intimately familiar with Excel and lost much of my engineering brain...