Has anyone had luck using excel spreadsheets to hold information?  If so, what is worth noting?  Peg S.

I use a spread sheet when gathering information that needs to compared. eg a recent one - checking everyone called James Dobbie born between 1870 and 1876, (because had no clue to his parents, just knew that he arrived Aus in 1901.). I had about 15 for that time period from a certain area. Then following them through census and immigration world wide, to work out which is the right one. Put all the info in columns and compare. I like to add highlighter to help make it work. regards Marg OLeary Port Stephens NSW -----Original Message----- From: pegappraiser Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2013 7:18 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [CoTyIre] spread sheets Has anyone had luck using excel spreadsheets to hold information? If so, what is worth noting? Peg S. ------------- Our community web-site: http://cotyroneireland.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Peg Spreadsheets can be extremely useful, I use them/have used them for various things Its very easy to transcribe using a spreadsheet for say a census entry I admit many of the things I used to use them for have now been superseded or outdated as family tree software does it already Some uses I have used before such as recording the quarters/months & years checked for registration indexes, or parish records, or probate years (sometimes I have drawn up a sheet and printed it off so I can tick off the years/quarters etc) As you can now check many of them online and easier it may not be worth recording that in a SS unless in the persons notes One useful use is to draw up a SS to establish what records have been checked or found for a certain person or groups of people Listing the life events across the columns with one for each census year, will etc List family down the left rows, then a small x to denote checked and say a y to show record found, its a very easy way to see what records should then be checked to fill in the blanks (just an example of what you can use a spreadsheet for) Whilst you can use Word of similar I find that far more difficult to manipulate Loretta mentioned difficulty in resizing columns in a SS, its very easy, hover pointer over the column split in the top row (where it shows A B C etc) and either left click and drag the column width to that you require, or simply double click on the line, that will open the column width to the largest text or number in the column to its left If you can't see all the data columns try reducing the size of the spreadsheet to fit on the page Databases are great if using huge quantities of exactly the same data, but are not so easy to set up or manipulate Spreadsheets are very easy The list of uses is endless, you are only restricted by your imagination You don't need Excel or other paid for software, OpenOffice is a complete office suite thats free and as easy to use as any other spreadsheet Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) On 27/12/2013 20:18, pegappraiser wrote: > Has anyone had luck using excel spreadsheets to hold information? If so, what is worth noting? Peg S.