J
JayneBartram
Hi, I'm taking on the office side of a new property development
business I've started with my partner.
I use Office 2003 Pro but find that I'm already duplicating a lot of
data within the various applications.
At this early stage, it's mainly contact details that are being
duplicated but I can see that if I'm not careful, this might well
extend to other groups of information.
For instance, I already have contact details both in an Access
"Contacts" file based on a template downloaded from the MS site, also
in an Excel worksheet within a workbook that combines all customer
details with jobs, dates and purchases information. I was trying to
keep a tolerant attitude to these duplications until I read a couple
of articles recommending business structures where Outlook is used as
the basis for Contacts, addresses etc.. and the though of triplicate
Contact data convinced me that I was heading down the wrong road.
I read some stuff about the "Business Contact Manager" add-on for
Outlook but it seems to be suited to quite elaborate business
structures, whereas my contacts consist only of customers and
suppliers, with little need for strategizing and project development.
At present I'm drawn toward keeping the Access database of Contacts
because it seems more customisable and extensible. So I'm looking for
advice or documentation on ways of reducing the excel workbook to only
contain other info and integrating the two applications Access and
Excel files together to form a whole.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
business I've started with my partner.
I use Office 2003 Pro but find that I'm already duplicating a lot of
data within the various applications.
At this early stage, it's mainly contact details that are being
duplicated but I can see that if I'm not careful, this might well
extend to other groups of information.
For instance, I already have contact details both in an Access
"Contacts" file based on a template downloaded from the MS site, also
in an Excel worksheet within a workbook that combines all customer
details with jobs, dates and purchases information. I was trying to
keep a tolerant attitude to these duplications until I read a couple
of articles recommending business structures where Outlook is used as
the basis for Contacts, addresses etc.. and the though of triplicate
Contact data convinced me that I was heading down the wrong road.
I read some stuff about the "Business Contact Manager" add-on for
Outlook but it seems to be suited to quite elaborate business
structures, whereas my contacts consist only of customers and
suppliers, with little need for strategizing and project development.
At present I'm drawn toward keeping the Access database of Contacts
because it seems more customisable and extensible. So I'm looking for
advice or documentation on ways of reducing the excel workbook to only
contain other info and integrating the two applications Access and
Excel files together to form a whole.
Any advice would be much appreciated.