To comment on the following update, log in, then open the issue: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=106232 Issue #|106232 Summary|Linking to Base data / Reporting Component|Database access Version|OOo 3.1.1 RC1 Platform|PC URL| OS/Version|Linux Status|UNCONFIRMED Status whiteboard| Keywords| Resolution| Issue type|ENHANCEMENT Priority|P3 Subcomponent|none Assigned to|dbaneedsconfirm Reported by|gummibj
------- Additional comments from gumm...@openoffice.org Fri Oct 23 20:44:07 +0000 2009 ------- Here is my situation: I collate and report on the various financial activities within our organisation. As part of that I am on the receiving end of a monthly .xls journal sheet from my accountant. I then harvest the data from those sheets (12 per year). So far I have been doing this by having a master report sheet with 12 tabs (1 per month) and linking by using sumproduct to link and sum up the various departments and months. Results: slow and sometimes unreliable. So I started looking into using Base for this project. Results: Step 1: Open base and import .xls sheet and registering. Easy and effortless step 2: Making sense with queries of the data and summing what needs to be summed up. Well, not so easy and not intuative at all (I am a user, not a developer) but I daresay I could figure this out if I kept at it. Step 3: Making a report. Total failure. I could not for the life of me figure out the report maker (Includes the Sun one). It didn't even like the idea of using more than 1 query per report. Step 4: Think instead of curse Step 5: A brilliant solution occurs to me. I could use the calc sheet but harvest the data out of the queries. I open up Calc, Push F4 and I can access the queries. And then another failure, I have tried and looked at so many ways of doing this but I cannot make the data link instead of copy. I want to link because I want to recycle all this work somehow next year and also be able to maintain the sheet somehow. Neither would work if all I am doing is copying the numbers. I might as well go back to pencils and calculators. Step 6: I try using Writer, again more than one frustration. It seems uncapable of linking to the data as being a number that I can then calculate on. I also doubt that a creative use of mail merge would work for this At this point I run out of steps but would like to submit an future enhancement for openoffice: - Forget about the report module within Base. Concentrate instead on making it easier to link to the data in a creative way (Copy, link, Sum queries etc. etc) within the other Openoffice applications. You already have a brilliant spreadsheet, a word processor and a presentation module. Why not use them, any one of them would be more than sufficient to do the task. Let Base be the calculating engine, which by the looks of it, it already can do in a very reliable way I think this will suffice for now. Thank you for your patience. Gudmundur Bjarnason --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: issues-unsubscr...@dba.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: issues-h...@dba.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: allbugs-unsubscr...@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: allbugs-h...@openoffice.org
