On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 19:12:39 +0100, Ian Goddard
wrote:

On 05/07/15 15:22, Steve Hayes wrote:
When we go to archives to record genealogical and historical
information, I usa a databade program,. askSam, but my wife uses a
spreadsheet, because she is an accountant, and that isd what she is
familiar with.

IT departments often encounter this situation, especially with accountants.

Write out 100 times "A spreadsheet is not a database"

But in this particular case were MOOC and 13/1/3119 in different
columns? If not this seems a particularly egregious error - even if
making assumptions about date-like strings is acceptable a spreadsheet
really shouldn't be trying to parse sub-strings to look for dates.

If you look it up in the online index, MOOC and 13/1/3119 are in
separate fields.

In this example:

DEPOT KAB
SOURCE MOOC
TYPE LEER
VOLUME_NO 13/1/2121
SYSTEM 01
REFERENCE 46
PART 1
DESCRIPTION HOFFMAN, ELIZABETH MOUNT. LIQUIDATION AND
DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT.
STARTING 19130000
ENDING 19130000

Excel turned the Volume No into a date -- 13/01/21

I'm not sure that Microsoft Access is much better, however. I once
tried to make a fairly simple database with names, addresses and dates
of birth, and the first person I entered had a birthdate of 1 Jan
1926, which MS Access changed to 1 Jan 2026, even though I typed in
the full date. I wasted a couple of days trying to get it to wrok,
then went back to using askSam, but my wife prefers to use
spreadsheets, because that is what she is familiar with.

Next time we go to the archives I'll try to persuade her to use
OneNote.




--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk