On Sun, Apr 05, 2026 at 03:17:51PM -0400, William Park via Talk wrote:
Question: How would you manage multiple people adding same kind of data into a spreadsheet?
Situation: This company uses Excel spreadsheet as final form for their sales peoples. So, each person pulls his/her own data from CRM subsystem, and adds to this spreadsheet. Well, a moron overwrote other people's entries, and lost entire weekend's work.
So they ask me, and I said, "I don't know, but I'll ask around".
In my previous companies, such spreadsheet would be on a server. And, whenever someone opens to edit, it would lock the file. But, this only addresses "access". Not the "content".
Possible Solution: I'm thinking "template". Each person would be populating same kind of data into spreadsheet. So, maybe a script merges data from his/her template? Maybe, a "web form"? I don't know.
It sounds like excel is the wrong tool for the job (it almost always is). But I suppose it each person had their own file to populate, then a main sheet could be made that just collected the contents from the other files for a final view. Still sounds like a terrible solution. -- Len Sorensen