Newbie Access vs Excel question

[REB911]

I have a client that has an excel report that hes wants to make easier to compile. He uses data from multiple diverse reports and uses at least 6 separate pivot tables and uses the resulting columns to compile this one report.

I've been tasked with this job quicker and easier. My excel knowledge stops at pivot tables and I have more experience with access. I'm envisioning converting this to access table and using queries in the place of pivot tables. There aren't that many records so I'm wondering if this would be overkill.

Is this cracking an egg with a sledgehammer? Should I look for a solution in Excel?

 

[Joe4]

Welcome to the Board!

All things being equal, certain situations dictate which is the better program to use.
In general, if you have various data lists that are "related to each other by field(s)", then what you are describing is a Relational Database. As such, Access is usually better for those type of things, as Access is a "Relational Database" program (that is what it is designed for!), while Excel is not (you can make Excel work as a relational database, but it is usually clunky and cumbersome to do so).

If it is something that you can do pretty easily in Access, that is a good indication that Access may be the better solution here.

Many times I see people use Excel instead of Access for things which would be better to do in Access..
The three main reasons why I see people do this is:
- don't have Microsoft Access
- aren't allowed to use Microsoft Access
- don't know how to use Microsoft Access

When I first learned Access, I thought of all the things that I was doing in Excel, which are so much easier in Access (like comparing two lists to look for differences). So the more I learned Access, the more I used that, and the less I used Excel (as I had a lot of Relational problems I was doing in Excel).

 

[REB911]

Thanks for the quick response! That's what I was thinking as well. Since I'm more comfortable with Access I thought I might not be giving Excel proper consideration since I don't know a lot of what it can do.

 

[Joe4]

Since I'm more comfortable with Access I thought I might not be giving Excel proper consideration since I don't know a lot of what it can do.

I find this refreshing to see!
Usually it is the other way around (people not giving Access proper consideration because they are unaware of what it can do). The vast majority of people I see are much more comfortable with Excel than Access.

I know someone who had a whole database in Excel (tons of sheets with VLOOKUPS to data on the other sheets), and actually exceeded the limit of formula dependencies Excel can track (over one million), which killed Excel's performance (as it had to recalculate every calculation every time a change was made, unless they turned Auto Calc off). Exceeding that limit is a big red flag that Excel is probably not the best tool for the job!