Carlos Nazario wrote: " ... need a good program to handle our database needs...considering Excel, but I questioned this thinking that a dedicated d-base program would be far better and easier to use. "
You might be deep into the spreadsheet program before you realized you wished it was a database program. I am good at Excel, and it is easy to use, but it cannot do some important database things that my old ClarisWorks DB used to do. Spreadsheets can sort, but you have to be very careful about selecting the "sort", or you can scramble it. I once lost a 5-year database of Christmas cards sent and received because of a bad spreadsheet sort. A spreadsheet program is for calculating first, organizing second. If you think you need a database program, you probably do. FileMaker is the gold standard, easy to use they say, and it does more than AppleWorks. For instance, I think its calculating capabilities are similar to a spreadsheet's. Also, its files are cross platform, and I think its databases are "relational", if you should need those features. I wish I had it but don't have a need to justify the cost. AppleWorks is cheaper, but be sure its database module can do all you need. I found the spreadsheet module of its predecessor ClarisWorks to be clumsy, inefficient and poorly-featured compared to Excel. Like a manual transmission vs automatic. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be August 26. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
