Christian Einfeldt wrote:
hi,
I need some help figuring out how to make OOo handle a massive 6 MB .xls
file better.
Here is the background: As some of you might remember, I have been
volunteering as a level one (meaning low level) tech support for a public
middle school in San Francisco. I have been trying to move the whole school
to FOSS, and I have been filming the process for the Digital Tipping
Point<http://archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint>documentary film.
I now have a vexing problem that is posing a rather serious obstacle to that
migration. The problem is a massive .xls spreadsheet that the school uses to
track the students' behavioral development, meaning do they do their
homework, do they arrive to school on time, do they participate in classes,
are they misbehaving, and so forth. This document, called the "paychecks"
Excel spreadsheet, is reported every two weeks. This spreadsheet is a
mission-critical tool for the school. We will not be able to move the
school to FOSS unless we are able to convince the principal that OOo can
handle this mission-critical document.
Hello!!
Pardon me but I have some questions:
What is FOSS? Free Open Source Software?
How long does it take for the xls spreadsheet to load on the systems the
teachers use now?
It is probably not helpful for you to consider the principal a
technophobe, but try thinking of her as a business manager who gets what
she needs from a current system and is concerned about a technological
change reducing her ability and her staff's ability to do their jobs.
Is there some way to break the large spreadsheet into parts that can be
linked?
Could individual teachers access only their own students or the students
in their grade and have updates done on a server?
Could the data be moved to Base?
Is there some change that could allow the users to get some increase in
functionality so a change would be worthwhile to the principal?
Can you realign your own priorities so you can look for ways to help the
users whether or not you can finish your filming project, or at least
put the users needs first and allow that your filming needs to work
around the solution you come up with?
Is it time to look at something still FOSS but not necessarily OOo as an
alternative? (I have over 20 years in IT business systems design and
management, but I'm new to this, so I don't know what alternatives may
be available.)
--
Thanks.
Yours,
**//Charlie
//***/Charles D. Seaman/**/
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