I'm sooo not an Excel guru. At this point, all my numbers have gone haywire- not because I don't understand what I'm doing, but more because Excel and I simply don't speak the same language. I haven't been able to figure out how to assign conditions in If Then format and really, that's all that's standing between me and the finished product. Well, not really - I haven't figured out how to adjust equally for Sales Volume and Production Volume. When one changes, naturally, the other one must also.

I do cheer myself on the fact that I developed a very cool report in Access yesterday for Exec. Now, whether Exec think it's cool or not is another story - it might be a little too high tech for them - but I did use Excel to generate the drop-down menus and the self-adjusting data once I got the data pulled from Access in delinated form. So instead pages and pages of data, I managed to consolidate it into a little box which can be sorted by manager, year, and vice-president. They can look at the full view or just at specific individuals, using the drop down menus. The chart is what really makes me happy though - you can add and subtract managers and the chart automatically adjusts itself. I'm shamelessly proud of this achievement.

The survey spreadsheet is actually quite impressive as well, and I'm honestly in awe of the Excel gurus who walk amongst us. I'm starting to think that there isn't much you can't do in Excel, and in some ways, Excel is so much more user friendly than Access. I've heard of some archivists who use Excel, rather than Access or another ASP program, to generate their dynamic HTML pages - which I would love to do for the WDFA so I don't have to keep indexing in 80 million places (note to self: find a new number).

On another note, I really want to get back to my novel. Got some FB from Tracy on it and scenes keep jumping into my head to write. Plus, she made me promise not to keep her hanging like Tracie kept us hanging when she sent us her novel - minus the last couple chapters. So I think when I'm done with this Victoria nightmare, then it'll be nice to spend an hour or so writing up those scenes I've had running through my head for the last week or so.

Gotta get me some of those discipline pills!