Aguila Blanca
Staff
I guess my mind works differently from yours. I currently keep a log -- of sorts -- on an Excel spreadsheet. But it's basically just a list. If one gun were stolen, for example, I can look up that one gun and find the serial number, when I bought it, and what I paid for it. To send that to the insurance company I would manually copy down the information. And I can certainly maintain a bunch of photos in a photo directory.Curious, Aguila, why does your firearms list need to be more complicated than an Excel spreadsheet?
But ... I would like it to be better organized. I could do as Dufus suggests and create a separate worksheet within a large workbook so there's one page per gun, but that to me is a very laborious and convoluted way of accomplishing a task that is exactly what database programs were intended to accomplish. I know how to do it that way. It means that each time you want to create a new record, you have to manually copy the template worksheet to a new page, then manually rename it for the firearm.
In fact, I've already imported my Excel spreadsheet into Access and created a data entry form that works quite nicely. That, alone, is an improvement. And from there I can go on to create various reports to cover any aspect of the data I choose to summarize on a page. What's missing is the ability to include photos with the record of each gun. I started out thinking two photos of each firearm -- left side and right side. Then I realized that the serial number isn't always on the side, so I'll make it three photos: left side, right side, and a closeup of the serial number. Then set up a report that will print out the key information for any particular firearm. If a gun is subsequently lost, stolen or strayed, I'll be able to just push a button and print out a one-page (or maybe two page) report with all the information pertaining to that gun ... and nothing else.
So I don't regard what I'm after as being more "complicated," I regard it as being more complete and more convenient. And far less complicated than Dufus' way of using Excel, because with the database you don't have to manually create a new page for each firearm. That's already done.