I keep all my clients' info on an Access database and all my accounts on an Excel spreadsheet. I'm quite proud of the database - in a modest sort of way. I devised it after several months of self-imposed study of SQL Server so that I had some idea of relational databases, all part of a rather desperate strategy to add to my fledgling programming skills and make myself more employable. There's a whole story there which I won't bore you with now. Anyway, by the time I'd waded through a whole fat blue Microsoft "Self-paced Training Kit" I had the basics of how to set up a home database and make queries of it.
I'm lucky to have Access. Time was when you could buy the full "Microsoft Office Suite" for a reasonable price. I'm talking Office 2003 here, which included:
- Word
- Outlook
- Access
- Excel
- Publisher
- PowerPoint
- Office Tools
Since the 2007 edition of Office, Microsoft have been less generous - oh let's call a spade a spade, they've got greedy - and although you could get Home & Student editions of Office 2007 and Office 2010 which included Word, Excel and the PowerPoint Viewer, you would have had to buy Outlook, PowerPoint and Access separately - at considerable expense!
When I bought my latest desktop PC in 2007 it had the Vista operating system installed, but I'd read some reviews by then and the first thing I did with my new computer was to wipe Vista off and install good ol' Windows XP. Although I didn't realise it immediately, this was a good move for my "Office" as it enabled me to keep my old 2003 suite, including Access.
And since then I've been happily keeping my records on 2003 software....until last week, when I came home from a client and tried to open my Excel spreadsheet to record my acquisition of yet more hard-earned loot.
It wouldn't open!
A little window popped up to tell me that something "couldn't be found" and please put in the Office 2003 disc. Well, the disc "couldn't be found" either - heaven knows where I've put it! - and panic nearly ensued. None of my Excel spreadsheets was working, so all my accounts for four years were inaccessible.
But it's not like me to panic - not immediately anyway. My Access database was working, so was Word, so was everything else, so perhaps I'd done something inadvertently stupid to Excel. I tried looking for answers on Google, and after browsing through several forums (fora??) someone mentioned "restore point". It's something I have very rarely used but I thought this might just save the day - or save four years, to be more precise! Excel was working the day before - and the day before that - and all through 2011....so if I could take my PC back a couple of days all might be well.
And so it turned out. I used the System Restore and took the PC back. My spreadsheets are miraculously working again. But it gave me a scary few minutes and reminded me of the advice that I read on other tutors' sites:
BACK UP YOUR FILES!
For something as important as the accounts, I really should get in the habit of storing them on a disk......and I shall.
PostScript
After the initial panic, a little analytical reason kicked in and - before I tried the System Restore - I did successfully right-click on an Excel icon and "Open with..." OpenOffice.org
I installed this suite some time ago and have worked with it, mainly so that I could help a client use it a couple of years ago. It's free to download and is generally very good. I'd recommend having this as a backup office suite - you might prefer it to Microsoft's.
Colin
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