filling a form in Excel... lookup? maybe?

B

bigwerdz

I would like to find a way to pull values (mostly text) from an Excel 2003
spreadsheet and put them into a form in another worksheet. I'd like to find
a way to change the information in the form by entering the client's name and
have the function pull the last entry for that client from the original
spreadsheet.

I vaguely remember there might be a way to do this with the lookup function,
but because of how the original worksheet is arranged, I'm not sure if or how
I can use the lookup function. The only field that is unique to each record
is the contract number, but not every record has a contract number, and that
field is not the first field.

Normally, I would have taken this blankety blank spreadsheet and thrown it
into Access (where it belongs), but the powers that be in this company want
it in Excel.

I have zero programming experience, and I'm stumped. Any suggestions would
be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
D

Dave F

Here's info on how to use the LOOKUP function:
http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/formulas/lookup.php

Without knowing what your spreadsheet looks like it would be impossible to
tell if you could use it.

As for Access--if the powers that be care only about the end result, why do
they care how you get to it? You're right that Access sounds perfect for
what you're looking to do. Excel isn't a database program and shouldn't be
used as such, even if it does have db capabilities like LOOKUP, VLOOKUP, etc.
It has very limited ways of forcing data integrity. But I'm sure you know
all this.

Dave
 
B

bigwerdz

Thanks for the link and the answer Dave.

The original worksheet is hard to describe and too big to show here... It
seems as though I'm going to have to rearrange the data there to get the
reports and forms to work the way the powers that be want them to. I was
hoping to avoid that.

As for Access - it's not on the computers, and those above don't want to
"bother" with it. My job is to make this <unprintable> workbook function so
anyone without extensive computer experience can use it and not break it.
hahaha. I agree with you about using Excel as a database, and it's very
frustrating to me every time I run across it (I'm a career temp office
worker).

Thanks again. I'll check out the link.
 
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