Hi


"liam" wrote in message
...

Thks Arvi for your comments.

I wish I could keep the info to a few sheets but I know the bosses and
their limitations and the amount of info they want to see (placed on a
single sheet) just isn't feasable for clarity and ease of use. I'm
already into 30 columns on a std spreadsheet layout and I can see that
rising to 50.

You can break the main sheet into several ones - on one of them you enter
the client identifier, on other sheets this identifier is displayed through
links.

Example: You have sheets Clients0 and Clients1. The column A on both sheets
is ClientID. On sheet Clients0 entries into column ClientID are limited to
be unique (you can use data validation for it). On sheet Clients1 in column
ClientID is linking formula, like
A2=IF(Clients0!A2="","",Clients0!A2)
The formula is copyed into column A at least for same number of rows, as has
clients table on sheet Clients0, but preferably you have some reasonable
amount of spare rows prepared.
On report(s), you use the same VLOOKUP to get the information, but depending
on searched data, the source table will be on sheet Client0 or Client1.



Sure I could break the info into a few sheets but I'm still left with a
long list on each sheet that they'd find incomplete and they wouldn't
want to keep having to change sheets and doing 'look ups" each time.

It looks like you didn't fully understand what I adviced. Boss don't need to
change anything except he selects client, whose info he wants to display.
All info he needs about selected client from selected report, is gathered
into single report from (various) source (input) table(s) (and usually is
designed to fit some printout sheet format, like A4 or Letter,
Landscape/Portrait). On report sheet, you absolutely don't have to follow
same layout, as on source sheets - you can group various data, use different
fonts and colors, insert charts based on client data etc. Nothing like some
dull Xteen-column table. I myself use table format on report sheets only for
multiple-row data - data from main client table are placed on report sheet
in a way, most appropriate to visualize the information.


Arvi Laanemets