My name’s Martin and I’m a recovering spreadsheet user.
There I’ve admitted it. In hindsight I was a spreadsheet user even before I started using computers, only I didn’t know it then. In those days I just used ‘graph paper’. I would draw up grids of information with arrows connecting bits of info.
In the 80’s I got my first Mac Plus. It revolutionised the project & business admin I was doing.
• Word processing was so much better than any typewriter. You could correct mistakes, format the text and add logos – BUT it couldn’t add up!
• Spreadsheets could add up but were very clunky on formatting layouts, eg an invoice.
• Even more annoying, each invoice had to be a separate file, which had to be stored in a folder, usually within a folder, within a folder, within a folder…
‘THERE MUST BE SOMETHING BETTER! I used to scream daily.
Someone suggested ‘FileMaker’ and more than 2 decades later there’s very little I can’t get it to do, simply, elegantly, efficiently.
OK it can’t…
• Photoshop images (but it can store and collate them so that they are easily found and used)
• Send emails (well it can. By handling all your contacts, automatically merging/composing the to, cc, subject and body, and sending directly via 3rd party software or in the background via the SMTP on your email server)
• Make coffee (but then it is a relational database so it can do all the user interface bits of the Costa Coffee machines, and – I’m sure – output the machine codes to boil the water, see if a cup is there, grind a set amount of beans…).
I’ve now used FileMaker in many hundreds of situations. Why use an Excel spreadsheet ever again when FileMaker can do it so much better and more powerfully.
Did you know that if you drop an Excel file onto the FileMaker icon it automatically converts and opens the spreadsheet in FileMaker!
This website has useful bits I’ve done over the years. It’s a reminder of what I’ve already solved. I often come back and reuse. I’m happy to share them with you.
regards
Martin
