Excel newbie trying to do something moderately complicated (analysis of staff data over time)

[Quoll]

I guys so I am a bit of an excel newbie and need some help getting my head around the best way to create an excel sheet for the data that I have.
I have a CS background and have done DB subjects as part of my course work however creating an SQL database isn't an option in this case.

The data I have is a list of staff data over a weekly time frame where there are three fields (Number of reports in progress, Clients booked, New Clients Taken on)
What I would like to do is to create a series of tables displaying information for each staff person over time as well as a summary of all staff for each item (ie Staff members reports in progress over time)

A nice to have would be a change in values over time (unfortunately the data is number of reports to complete not number completed so it doesn't really show work effort and I'd like to be able to highlight if some one as a consistent number of outstanding reports for an extended period of time and or not taking on new clients ie slacking off :P)

I have a fair idea how i would go about this in SQL and generating various queries to extract the data I need but I'm not sure where I'd even begin in excel.

If some one knows of a tutorial where a similar thing gets implemented and could point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again.

 

[FranzV]

Hi Quoll,

I would recommend you use Pivot Tables if all of your data is in the same table or Power Pivot if your data is in multiple tables and resembles a relational database. There are many sites with great documentation to learn these topics. I would recommend the following:

Chandoo
Pivot Tables Tutorial
PowerPivot Introduction

Rob Collie's PowerPivotPro has many usefull posts on PowerPivot.

If you want to get deep into PowerPivot (it's worth it), you can lear a lot from the Italians at SQLBI.

If you have more specific questions, this forum is great. You can find most answers in previous threads and if no solutions seems to suit your needs, there's always someone willing to answer a new question at the forum.

Have fun learning Excel.

PS. There are many other great sources, but I can't list them all.