Database advice

[microbe]

First off, I don't think anyone has asked:

Look ahead two years. Within that time frame.

How many people do you envisage might need to use this database.

1? 10s? 100s?

Even if it is only two, would they need to work on it simultaneously?

How many customer records do you think you will need? 10s? 100s? 1000?

The answers to these questions would lead to different recommendations.

I infer that you are in fact only looking at a single user application being used on a single machine.

If this is the case, while I think the other suggestions are excellent products (Sugar, Access, Filemaker) I think the advice to use Outlook is likely to be very good for you.

You can download a free trial of Outlook with Business Contact Manager from here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/co...674171033.aspx

It may be that you could do all you need just with this, Outlook is programmable and can be made to perform all sorts of neat tricks and can interface to other Office applications (Word, Excel, Access) in a variety of useful ways.

If you get stuck, you may already know, or may be able to find through your local Business Link, someone with advanced MS Office skills who can help you set up Outlook to do all you want, it is probably one of the most widely used business applications.

If Outlook doesn't cut it for you, you might also find it easier and more effective in terms of time to look at the various Excel templates which help with a wide range of tasks. You can browse through them here.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...595491033.aspx

If you are already familiar with Excel this might be a good place to start although I do think that Roy's suggestion of Outlook is probably the one which will lead you to greater happiness in the long run.

[Mendip Ironing]

Thank you to all for their suggestions regarding the database.

Tim, I have thought about two years down the line and how the database would have to function with me then as I don't really want to change things too much as time goes by. I do believe in the moto of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

I really like the idea of Excel as I have used this a lot over the years and know that it can do some tremendous things. I also like the idea of Outlook for emailing my clients etc. I do think that I will get quite a bit of work from emails.

So, I think that I will investigate Outlook and Excel further to see if I can import information from one to the other.

Again, thank you for all the suggestions and links so far. Really appreciated.

Tracy