Excel vs Access

[Boudica]

Dear Technical people

I'm doing a part-time admin job for a small college with about 200 students, they are about to separate from a larger college and need to set-up their student database. The owner/professor is suggesting an excel spreadsheet (one day they may have up to 600 students) and I wondered if it would be better to set up a simple access db, but I'm not very technical and would be really grateful for any advice you might be able to give.

Cheers
B

[d000hg]

It depends what data they want to store, and how they want to use it. It's very hard to advise without knowing this kind of information, although my gut instinct is a database is the right solution. And before anyone jumps in... MSAccess is quite appropriate for this kind of small setup. I can give more suggestions but will wait to see if they're appropriate rather than deluge you in tech-speak. The only caveat I have is that a DB of any sort is better done by a developer, even Access' visual tools don't really hide the fact databases are not simple to a non-techy.

[DaveB]

It depends what data they want to store, and how they want to use it. It's very hard to advise without knowing this kind of information, although my gut instinct is a database is the right solution. And before anyone jumps in... MSAccess is quite appropriate for this kind of small setup. I can give more suggestions but will wait to see if they're appropriate rather than deluge you in tech-speak. The only caveat I have is that a DB of any sort is better done by a developer, even Access' visual tools don't really hide the fact databases are not simple to a non-techy.

Aside from the technical issues Access would probably be better in terms of protecting the information, depending on the type of data being held. Data Protection legislation requires that you have suitable technical controls in place to restrict access to sensitive personal information and this is easier to do in Access than in Excel.

[Not So Wise]

Defiantly Access over excel but with one caveat, any Muppet can set up an excel spread sheet, takes a bit more IT know how to set up access database, lot more IT/database know how to do it right

[thunderlizard]

Part of me says don't force somebody to upscale (which is kind of what this) before they actually want to. There are advantages to Access (very much depending on what, and how many, kinds of data need to be stored) but they are more in terms of things that might possibly go wrong in future, not problems from the outset. I'd say let him start in Excel if he can already visualise it that way, and review after a few months. By that stage you'll/he'll have experience with the data, and will be able to set up sensible rules in Access if need be. It's easy to move data across.

There are various things that somebody more familiar with Excel will muck up in Access if they don't know better (e.g. there's no undo or "close without saving" option, and beginners usually misjoin their first few queries). For security, Excel and Access passwords are both about equally hackable (though Access has a more advanced "sophisticated" security option too)

[d000hg]

I think I agree with all everyone else said. Just a few columns in Excel is overkill in one sense to do in Access and has the advantage most IT-savvy folk can do Excel but not even a easy DB like Access. If you go the DB route I'd suggest they might out-source it to a company like mine

[lilelvis2000]

600 students sounds like a lot of people to put onto a spreadsheet IMHO. Imagine trying to find someone with the search in Excel. Excel definitely isn't designed for that.
Setting this up in Access would only take a couple of hours and you'd have some decent forms and reports too.
I work in Access all the time - its my main money earner. I get the occasional up size request from people and most have less than 500 rows in their excel sheets. They mainly complain that they can't find information.
I say go with Access...But with a caveat as not everyone with Office will also have Access on their machines. Sure the Access runtime can help solve that..its a pain in the ass too.

[d000hg]

600 rows is hardly a lot in Excel. I don't think its search capabilities will struggle somehow, anything up to 1000 rows is not even hard to manage manually if they're sorted by name for instance.
And you're not looking at "a couple of hours" in Access, if you want to put any useful forms/reports on top... a DB with no GUI is not going to help anyone. In the ideal world, I'd do a little bespoke C# app on top so users are totally unable to accidentally edit the DB itself... and removing the need for Access installation. But this is a step or two up from Access forms in cost/effort. Depends a lot on the target users.

[Random]

Access definitely, more scalable and better designed for multiple use/ edit - Jet 4.0 it much better than Excel. Also 600 students doesn't necessarily mean 600 rows! Could include courses or other details which would require one to many. In that case it would scale very rapidly. Ive seen so many people use Excel as a database and unless you are very savvy and can link in forms and events it very rarely (if ever) works. One of the reasons is its not efficient to manage many columns of data, you need it in a GUI somehow.
2 hour tutorial on simple database design and you can put together some very basic Access database.

[Olly]

Like a lot of people here, I use Access and Excel daily - though perhaps a little strangely straight pure and simple data analysis is my bread and butter.

Having been in the situation a lot of times before I can only echo Thunderlizard.

Get a feel for the data first and if and only if limitations are starting to get to you then migrate from Excel.

My only other piece of advice is don't leave it too late to move to a database if that's the route you're taking and make sure the DB design is fairly good. A spreadsheet ruled with an iron rod can work very well though, few seldom are though.