creatiing a list

[gardenmad]

I want to catalogue my books, which are many, and I want to create an alphabetical list on my computer - being compute illiterate, I do not know how to do this - I would like to be able to make lists of authors alphabetically, and also, separately, lists of books by subject, e.g. gardening, cookery, biology, histories, etc. Any help would be much appreciated.

[saxy_jag]

Use your spreadsheet programme (eg. Excel) to create a very simple database. Create columns for author (in the format 'Last Name, First Name', Title (moving any 'The's or 'A's to the end, following a comma), and any other info you want to use - ISBN, subject or whatever.

Now, say you want to order them by title - highlight all the rows you want to order, then click Data > Sort. You'll get a box asking you whether you've included your header rows or not, and which column you want to sort by first. Just select the options you need, click OK, and wahay - you're there!

You could use a database programme, but if you're not too computer-savvy they can be quite long winded to set up and can sometimes do quite alarming things if you're not too sure what you're doing.

I use Excel to manage our library service's 400 odd subscription titles in this way, and it hasn't let me down yet.

[Rock'n'Roll]

As your want's don't sound too complicated. Try and get hold of " Access for dummies" it will show you how to do a basic database which will be sufficient for your needs. Not sure,but there may even be a Wizard on access to help

[Buenchico]

This might help:
http://www.download.com/BookDB/3000-2131_4-104 67461.html?tag=lst-0-4

Chris

[gardenmad]

Thank you to all who replied, I shall investigate them all, but yours, Chris, is just what I want - I've downloaded it already and look forward to a few quiet hours using it. Thank you very much indeed!