Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Excel Xenon Bulb Spreadsheet

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Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-01-2014, 10:51 AM:

I have a question. I hate making spreadsheets. In the past I always have had someone on my staff that was really talented in making excel spreadsheets. I don't have that luxury anymore. So here's my question:

Does anyone have an generic Excel Xenon bulb report/spread sheet that I could use? I have to create a report that has multiple locations, with multiple screens. Does anyone have anything close to something like this? The hard part is gathering all the information, I am hoping the easy part will just be plugging the info in and making some basic changes to the sheet.

Just throwing it out there.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-01-2014, 11:36 AM:

If you are just recording the information and printing it out, any old application will do. It doesn't have to be Excel or OpenOffice/LibreOffice, etc. You can just make a table in any old text editor or word processor and use that. Why waste the time unless you are going to use the data for something.

If you want to keep track of average lamp life or stuff like that, Excel, et. al., would be the application to use. It's really not that hard to do. Just select a row or column then choose a function from the list. For multiple locations, just make a new sheet in the workbook and duplicate the template from one to the other.

However, if what you want to do is make cost/benefit calculations to use in decision making, you should probably do this with a database application like FileMaker or similar. (I REALLY dis-recommend Access!)

It all comes down to what you want to do.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-01-2014, 12:15 PM:

For right now, it's just informational. But I think that it will go in the direction of cost/benefits etc.

So let me look into that. Thanks.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-01-2014, 01:33 PM:

A database is more work to set up and maintain but, for cost and benefits at multiple locations, it can give you a lot more information.

Essentially, you would set up a database table that includes all the fields you want to keep track of:
Date. Lamp Hours. Brand. Serial no. Location. Projector type. Etc., etc.

From there, you set up templates to display the data in layouts that show you what you want to know then you can make calculations and create reports based on the data.

You can do much of this with a spreadsheet. It would be easier to do and would take less time to maintain. If all you want are totals and averages, spreadsheets are the way to go.

However, if you want to know whether "Projector #X" at "Location Y" is getting fewer hours from a lamp than all the others, a database is probably what you want.

If you start getting complaints that one theater is having problems more often than the others, you might be able to mine a database for more information.

The problem is overhead. It takes more time and more work to set up and manage a database than a spreadsheet. You'll also have to have a person to operate the program who has some understanding of what a database is, versus a spreadsheet.

Just from a superficial glance at your question, you could probably get away with a "flat" database. (Not relational.) If that's the case, you could go either way, spreasheet or database. It all depends on how much work you want to do as compared to what information you want to track.