Excel Spreadsheet - Merged parts

[China Doll]

Hi All,

In a nutshell my IT department doesn't know very much about excel and I've presented them with a query that they're 'getting back' to me about but I'd like to know now in case I have to adjust some of the work I've done.

We have a spreadsheet in which we keep details of names who have been referred on to social services, some of these names have siblings who are also included on the form although they may not actually have visited us themselves but we need to keep details fo them too. Up to now I have been merging fields that have the same surname, address, reason for referral etc but obviously not merged fornames, ages etc.. I've just gone to sort the document in to date order and it's telling me that all the merged cells have to be the same size for me to do this. This is going to be big problem if I go much further entering the data the same way as I'll need to be able to sort by date, reason for referral, borough etc for reports in the future.

Does anyone know if there is any way around this please? Or will I just have to unmerge the current cells?

Cheers.

[Davethedog]

You cant sort merged cells.

I would suggest that you copy into a new sheet in the same workbook, unmerge then insert a column in row A and number down a gainst all the entries, then sort by date.
if you don't get the right results, you have your original sheet plus using column A you can restore the copy.

If I a have given a load of tosh sorry but its a bit hard, trying to visulise, hope it helps though.

[China Doll]

Cheers Dave, I pretty much thought that was going to be the answer unfortunately.... Thank God I'm only up to middle of feb this year when I discovered it!

[mike11111]

There is no reason why you should have to merge cells at all in this scenario. Merely type each data entry into its relevant cell, then when you need to sort you can just select the appropriate data and ask Excel to sort it by the column specified.

[China Doll]

It was for ease of entry Mike, I've got some rather large families/entries at times, copying and pasting the same details they have in common seemed excessive and not visually striking that this is a group rather than say, 7 seperate referrals.

The drawing board awaits me!

[mike11111]

I take your point, but unfortunately every system has its limitations.
More to the point, it is a damning indictment of your IT dept that you had to come on here to resolve a problem which they should have done by return of post. I would alert your line manager.

[China Doll]

It's an ongoing thing, they don't have an 'excel person' there... I'd love to say it's the first time I've had this problem but I've not. I had another excel file that became unstable because of all the different formatting used (lots of colours and information as it was a visual theatre list type thing and spanning a wide period of time), it took them a week and a 'bit of research' to sort that out (by making a new damn file)! They weren't even sure you could have more than one person editing at the same time, it was me that told them I'd read it could be done.

And my line manager is aware... Unfortunately running issue... Besides which, I suspect my 'tone' might end up being reported back to her anyway... whoopsie...

Rant over!

[scotman]

Why are you using Excel? This is far more suitable for a database application.

[China Doll]

I agree scotman. I have a query outstanding regarding the use of access database which I'm due to chase at the end of the week. I know a bit about access but I don't think enough to try and do this myself.