VBA stands for "Visual Basic for Applications". It is the programming
language that Excel, and some other Application Programs use for writing
their Macros. Macros are really miniature "Computer Programs", and are the
"code" that would be applied to the buttons to perform the hiding, as well as
other tasks. If you're new to VBA, then you have a ways to go to get to
where you are able to work there........but it's much worth the trip if you
intend to stay in Excel. On the other hand, Roger's suggestion about using
the Custom Views feature to do your column hiding may be the way to start
out. Personally, I'm not familiar with that feature but it should work fine
as Roger describes, and you can always switch over to VBA later if desired.

Incidently, on large databases I usually do a Windows FreezePanes about
row 10, and use the area above the Freeze Line for my Title Block, Navigation
buttons to go quickly to the top or bottom of the database, toggle Autofilter
off and on, etc etc.

Now for some much-needed coffee.......Good Luck with your project, and be
sure and post back if you have more questions.........

Vaya con Dios,
Chuck, CABGx3



"Jo4321" wrote:

Awesome CLR. That would work for us, I think, if I could combine the info
into one spreadsheet but still have the data easy to view. I didn't know
that there was a way to view unweildy spreadsheets to "hide" some of the
columns

Now, so I can look up tutorials on how to do this, what would that process
be called? (making buttons that have some kind of code to hide the columns)

Also, what does the acronym VBA mean that you mentioned a few times.

Thank you.
Jo

"CLR" wrote:

Personally, I would combine as many of the different spreadsheets as I could
into one master file. You have over 250 columns and 65000 rows to play with.
Viewing is no problem if taken into the design. For instance, you can have
a main menu that would have buttons for various categories of information,
such as "Personal", "SkillSet", or whatever your various different files now
separate, and when each button is pressed, only the columns for that category
are visible, the rest are hidden.......or the whole thing can be viewed at
once if desired. As for Reporting, or Analysis, specific columns and or rows
can be pulled out of this database and moved to a "working" sheet for
processing and formatting that does not affect the database. If you must
deal with information in multiple Excel files, it is doable with VBA.....each
file can be opened from the master file, when needed, Edited, or information
extracted, and then the file closed, all under program (VBA) control.
Virtually anything you can imagine doing by manual means, can be automated
with VBA and Excel can do at the push of a button.

I have written small programs in Excel whereby the user gets a downloaded
file from the company computers. They open my program, retrieve the
downloaded file, and extract data from it, format the data for presentation,
run calculations and other analysis on the data, and even email portions of
it to others. The downloaded file can be in the form of an Excel file, a
text file, a .pdf, or it could be the result of a MSQuery of and external
database from Access, Excel, or other database programs.......the
possibilities are endless. It does not matter if Excel is THE most efficient
program to do all the things one might want to do in, but that it CAN do
those things and the user is comfortable with it, so thereby will use it.
The pureists will argue that point, but who cares? No matter how nice a
program is or how efficient, if the user is uncomfortable with it, they won't
use it.