Crazy excel help needed... again. Every month I have a monotonous series of tasks to perform in excel and I have exhausted all of the possibilities I know of to make things easier- more details inside. [more inside]
posted by TheBones on Aug 11, 2009 - 17 answers

I have been asked to make a proposal to upsize an Access database to allow for a few more concurrent users (currently 10) and ideally improve the overall performance of the system. Am I getting in over my head? [more inside]
posted by cbrody on Mar 10, 2009 - 11 answers

What is the easiest (and free) method of exporting a MySQL database and getting it (intact) into Access ? [more inside]
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt on Apr 3, 2008 - 3 answers

What is the easiest way to get this data into a MySQL database? [more inside]
posted by rlef98 on Nov 2, 2006 - 19 answers

How can I implement bi-directional synchronized table changes in a mySQL database and Microsoft Access? [more inside]
posted by mic stand on Apr 19, 2006 - 6 answers

What is the best alternative interface for an SQL server? [more inside]
posted by benjh on Jan 12, 2006 - 6 answers

Database Query [+] [more inside]
posted by benjh on Jan 24, 2005 - 10 answers

I am a freelance journalist, and a document freak. But also I am very chaotic. I would like to use some sort of database to keep track of the articles, documents, web snippets, references, quotes, URLs, bibliography that I use in my work. But I have many questions and doubts [more].

Should I use a database that it is linked to the external documents (which I keep nonetheless), or should I go for a database that has all of these documents embedded? I work in a Windows / OSX environment (desktop PC and a G4 Powerbook), so this keeps me from going all the way to Access (which I hate) or Filemaker (which I don’t know very well). I’ve been thinking of keeping a MySQL database server, maybe powered with a modification of something like Everything, and accessing the data via web browser, but I fear that the thing wouldn’t escalate well. (Keep in mind that I am not a programmer, I can install Movable Type or GeekLog in my webserver, and tinker a little with php files changing little things here and there, although I have friends that can help me)

I don’t know if there are built-in solutions for what I need, or if you can point me to a database template (for Access or FileMaker) already built for journalist research. The fact is that I have tons of information and documents (some of them already stuffed in CD and DVD backups), but I have a hard time keeping track of everything, and very often it is very difficult for me to retrieve information that I know I have saved but I can’t tell where it is.
posted by samelborp on May 11, 2004 - 9 answers