What's the best way to organize this stuff?

[Max]

I am working on project at my job. It is not a time-sensitive project, but
the data is becoming a bit unwieldy the way I have it.

It is a list of non-profit organizations and their newsletter information.
I have, for example, the name of the organization and a main phone number;
sometimes a secondary number or extension; sometimes an email address;
sometimes I have a contact name, sometimes I have no contact name, sometimes
there is more than one contact name (as well as assorted phone numbers, with
or without extension numbers, with one, none or more email addresses);
sometimes a department and/or title. Then I have a note indicating that the
organization has or hasn't a newsletter. Sometimes the newsletter has a
name. Sometimes I have the distribution count (which is not always related
to the organizations' total number of members.) Then there are two types of
information for the newsletters: general publication information, and
commercial advertising rates.

I am not sure if I should just keep it as it is, which is just a list in a
Word document, or if I should type it all up as an Access database, or as a
simple (but long) table in Word. (I am not considering Excel for two reasons
-- one is that Excel I think is better for numbers or financial applications,
and two is that I am not at all familiar with using Excel, whereas I have a
limited experience with Access). OTOH, re-doing it in a different
application means me re-typing all the data.

Thanks for your advice in advance.

In Peace,
Max

 

[Dave the Sys. Admin.]

I would recommend looking into "importing" the information from your Word
doc. to an Access database. I have limited knowledge of Access but I think
you can "import" information from another document and you will have the
oppurtunity to "map" the information to certain column headings/sub-headings
etc.
Just a thought.

 

[Beth Melton]

Sounds like you have a need for a relational database which would be
Access if you are using Office.

If you aren't familiar with relational database concepts then are a
couple articles that may help:

"Access Terminology and Relational Database Concepts"
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=73

"Normalizing Access Data"
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=88

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Beth Melton]

While you can import Word data into Access the easiest method is to
copy/paste the Word table to Excel, then copy/paste from Excel into
Access.

If step-by-step instructions are needed or if you need to go directly
from Word to Access then here's an article that may be of interest:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/tblsfldsfms/WordToAccess.htm

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/


"Dave the Sys. Admin." <[email protected]>
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