Hello,

First, let me explain where I'm starting from...

I help out with a private non-profit club as a Board member and as
Secretary. Our current membership list is done via a MS Works database
that was set up by persons unknown the better part of 10 years ago. The
person doing the data entry portion and mailing out the newletters, etc.
is just barely computer-literate, i.e. surf, check email, maybe fill out
a template or form if it's not too complicated - maybe. Lots of
hand-holding involved. Along the way there have been some computer
crashes and just general data entry mistakes, so the existing 'database'
is in pretty sorry shape. I got a copy, purchased a new copy of Works
9.0, exported the flat-file db as a .csv file and imported it into
Excel, and using Autofilter proceeded to find and fix the worst of the
data inconsistencies (mostly wrong or incomplete data in various
fields). I re-imported the .csv file as a Works db, then cut and pasted
the 'sanitized' data back into the table of the original database file.
I added a few basic filters & reports to give us some things like
annual & current membership lists, new members in last 30 days, etc.

Now, for where I want to go from here...

For better or worse, I'm probably the computer 'guru' amongst the
available candidates, by a considerable margin. Which means... if
anything is going to change for the better, it's going to have to be me
that does it. I don't have the spare time to actually just assume the
whole membership/newsletter role, as I'm about 20-30 years younger than
most of the board, i.e. not retired yet ;) So... either I have to keep
supporting this Works database, or find a better solution - that I can
deal with on my own terms. I'm reasonably proficient with Excel, up to
the point of simple macros. Actual VBA programming is something I'm
just starting to learn. Given that this is a non-profit club, just
buying a pre-canned solution off the shelf isn't a viable option; I'd
still have to support it, and likely not be able to get at the guts of
it if I needed to. And they tend to be priced for deep pockets ;) We
aren't actually doing anything *that* complex with our membership list
at the moment - tracking who's paid up and who isn't, and generating a
mailing list for printing labels for the newsletter. There's a number
of other things I'd like to do in addition or instead of the way we are
doing things now, but none of them seem to really require a full
relational database... but they start to get a bit involved in terms of
manipulating a flat list - I think, anyways. In a perfect world I'd
prefer building something that could run on Excel if a person has it
installed, or OpenOffice if they don't i.e. somewhat platform agnostic.

So... would I be heading in the right direction to try to migrate this
scenario over to an Excel spreadsheet? I can see having a master
membership list worksheet, along with other worksheets for easy viewing
of life members or other special categories, and a worksheet to function
as a data entry form for entering / viewing single records. That's just
for starters.

Any suggestions or advice?

Thanks,

Monte