jstrawbr@kean.mun.ca (Jack Strawbridge) (10/18/89)
In article <12890@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, foxm@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Mike Fox) writes: > The problem: A construction company wants to standardize the way they do > bids. They will use a spreadsheet program to enter bids. What they are > running into is that there are so many catagories that making a large > worksheet is not practical. The goal is to make the worksheets quickly and > easily. > I'm wondering if there is a way to store rows of a worksheet and then > insert them into the worksheet. The ideal procedure would be a pop-up > window from which the desired items could be selected and inserted into > the sheet. Is there a spreadsheet or utility that will do this? > In Lotus 1-2-3 (the only spreadsheet with which I am familiar) you could certainly manage this task. You could create one monster sheet with all the rows you would ever need, but with only the formulas entered (no data). Individual rows, or groups of rows, can be given "range names". Then, when preparing a particular bid, the user would use a File Combine command specifying one named range after another until the particular subset needed for this bid is present. In other words, the user selects needed modules. Now, if the "monster" spreadsheet gets too big, you could split it up keeping some groups of rows in one, some in others, etc. In either case, be careful because of the relative cell addresses that could be involved in the formulas. You would want to (probably) make them absolute and write a tight procedure manual for users. Good luck!