Dear Bob ... Excel spreadsheets ARE the devil's work, no doubt. They should be viewed as nothing more than an quasi-automated piece of paper that is an accountant's crutch. REAL accountants would put the data into a real database (yes, Access counts, Filemaker, even Dbase counts, and not everything warrants being in Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, Interbase, SQL Server...the industrial stregth databases) and then export Dear Bob …Excel spreadsheets ARE the devil’s work, no doubt. They should be viewed as nothing more than an quasi-automated piece of paper that is an accountant’s crutch. REAL accountants would put the data into a real database (yes, Access counts, Filemaker, even Dbase counts, and not everything warrants being in Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, Interbase, SQL Server…the industrial stregth databases) and then export the data to an Excel spreadsheet for display/reporting/charting/OUTPUT purposes only.If you’re really serious about this start with Edward Tufte’s books on “data” design and work backward to what you’ll know is the appropriate choice for your work. – The ExorcistDear Exorcist …Aw, now, I just can’t agree. Databases are terrible tools for mathematical modeling – using them for that purpose is just as bad a kludge as using a spreadsheet to manage data. And of course, a lot of IT organizations carefully keep all database tools out of the hands of end-users, so they couldn’t take your advice if they wanted to.– BobDear Bob … Ah yes…I would agree on that one…for modelling, databases would be terrible. I was thinking more along the lines of “administrative” computing (accounting, marketing, blah, blah, blah…”read a record, write a record” as I call it, ala the ol’ COBOL days). And you’re right, in most orgs, even Access is kept well hidden…which is a shame because quite often we give everyone a spreadsheet and they try to develop whole business apps in the damn things. For modelling you’re absolutely right!– The Exorcist II ——– Technology Industry