MS Excel v Access

[rogerisin]

My boss wants an excel spreadsheet to have multi-user access for reading and writing. I'm of the opinion that cannot happen at best, suicidal at worst to save information without writing over and think MS Access is the platform for such a project.

Anyway,

I would love a consensus of those who are reading this to gauge if I am correct (MS Access is the way to go) or not. If it is do-able in Excel, I do not want to download any additional applications to help Excel be a multi-user platform.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[Joe4]

I would certainly choose Access over Excel for multi-user structure. It seems to handle it better than Excel. Also, I would recommending splitting the Access database so everyone has their own Front-End.

Note that if you are going to have a lot of concurrent users, you may want something ever stronger for your Back-End, like SQL. Typically, though, if you will never have more than (let's say) 20 users at once, I think Access will do the job for you.

 

[SydneyGeek]

I'll second Joe.

Multi-user is definitely the domain of a database. Depending on what your users are doing you may be able to use Excel as a front end --
Little data entry, mostly bulk loads: Excel is fine
Moderate to large amounts of data entry, with control over user access and data validation: Use Access as the front end.
For reporting / displaying / analysing the data you could use Excel to pull back the data as queries, then pivot and / or chart the results.

Denis

 

[rogerisin]

I would certainly choose Access over Excel for multi-user structure. It seems to handle it better than Excel. Also, I would recommending splitting the Access database so everyone has their own Front-End.

Note that if you are going to have a lot of concurrent users, you may want something ever stronger for your Back-End, like SQL. Typically, though, if you will never have more than (let's say) 20 users at once, I think Access will do the job for you.

Thanks Joe!

 

[rogerisin]

Thanks SydneyGeek! I have a half dozen users to-date and that could grow. That's why I thought Access is the better alternative than a mere Excel workbook.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[RoryA]

BTW, although you can set up an Excel workbook as a Shared Workbook to allow multiple users, you really shouldn't. Shared Workbooks are notorious for file bloat, data loss and corruption, and general strange behaviour.

 

[Domski]

Shared workbooks are inherently evil. Overuse of them will one day be likely open up a portal to Hades and the world will end.

Just saying.

Dom

 

[SydneyGeek]

Agreed. When someone mentions shared workbooks I get out the cross and garlic, and go looking for a wooden stake.

Denis