Geek Help?

[purejuice]

I want to make an updatable computer document of botanical info. It would be plants used by Pueblo indians, Navajo and Apache, both Mescalero and Chiricua. Each entry would have perhaps seven or eight components I'd like to have on a horizontal layout listed under column headings, such as Spanish name, Native name, usage, and so on.

I want it to be alphabetical, and I want the software to do the alphabetizing such that the laboriously entered info in the eight or so horizontal cells, ie., usage, Spanish name, etc., moves with the name of the plant as alphabetized by the computer. Excel does not do this reliably, or I don't know how to.

I think Excel, with all its math capabilities, may be way too complicated to learn for this simple problem.

What program (for Mac) should I be using? I am unable to get whatever that faux Excel freeware for Mac is to work for me, to get it out of read only mode, etc. The tutorials on all of them are useless. I'm looking for something that's the lowest tech solution. Got any suggestions? Thanks.

Comments

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

Excel should do this pretty easily.

P.S. Have you seen what Cat Yronwode has done with the plant usages in African-Amer folk magic?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

can you suggest a good tutorial for excel?

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

i don't know much about it and basically learned as a went along. I think the "Sort" function is what you are looking for and should keep everything aligned as it should when you sort the rows alphabetically.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

well, yes it should, but it didn't.

[pomo-drunkard.livejournal.com]

When you go to sort a column, you might get a warning that reads "Microsoft Office Excel found data next to your selection. Since you have not selected this data, it will not be sorted. What do you want to do?" the options are "Expand the selection" and "continue with the current selection." If you hit "expand the selection," it will sort all data by the heading that you chose. If you continue with the current selection, it will just sort that column.

The other way to do that is to just select the entire group of data, and hit the Sort Button, and then choose what column you want to sort by.

That should keep everything aligned.