Help and Suggestions please

I have a very quickly cobbled together work in progress Excel sheet that needs to be modernised or changed into a different format.

The existing sheet is H E R E

It is a shared Excel workbook that multiple users can access and change selected data fields only - not protected at present for your benefit during the day so that everyone knows where a car is in the system (on the workshop floor, at the MOT station, in the valet bay) and at what stage the repairs are at (completed, awaiting parts, awaiting authority).

It works, but is awkward to use and prone to crashes when more than one person is accessing a line sometimes.

Any suggestions how to modify it? I’m no good at Access, but woud that be the way to go and can you share it like you can an Excel Workbook?

Your help would be gratefully received guys

My track record for suggestions is not too good. But haviing said that…

I suspect that you’ve taken Excel about as far as it can go. I would look for something that can handle a client / server method of operation. The server would maintain the master copy of the data, and the clients would ask for the current view, ask the server to make a change, etc.

You should be able to knock something up quickly in Access just using some web help. The other option is to look around and see if there is a workflow tool available on freeware, that would be an ideal tool for this.

Or MySQL would be good as well. You’d need to create a friendly frontend for it though.

I agree that Excel is too limited. Access would be fine, but it would take time to learn it and adapt it. Same with MySQl. :sigh:

I would look around for Access sample/shareware of Auto shop … if not well this is pretty simple stuff heck even DT or Juggy could bang this together fast!

If I had time, and well lived in UK you could buy the beer, and we could put it together over lunch. So go hit up the UK group for some help…come on guys it’s like 4 tables, and few queries, and 2 forms, and reports…no really…

Ok well send me the airfare…heck it’s only $2000 US…just kidding…Good luck!

:lol: Thanks Greg! :rolleyes: I think I will have to start learning Access and try and work out something myself. I’ve checked about for any freeware proggys that might suit, but none seem to fit my needs ATM.