Another spreadsheet project - need opinions/suggestions

[Ziz]

Ok, so I'm guessing you remember my WEG catalog spreadsheet, right? Working on a similar project - the Adventure Journal Content Reference.

Link to file on my Google Drive

What I'm attempting to do is create a searchable file of all the articles and accompanying game stats in each issue.

Let's say you need a new creature for your characters to come up against. You remember something from one of the Journals, some kind of bird, for example. Fire up the spreadsheet, search "bird" and the hits will end up referencing you back to which issues/articles it may have came from, along with the starting page of the articles. At that point, you can go read those specific issues/articles instead of having to rummage through every book or ask around on here or other places hoping someone has a better memory than you.

So, assuming you think this is a good concept, key question/suggestion:

Should I just leave all the names of everything listed under "Notes" or should I further break them down into separate columns? (Scroll right to see what I'm talking about if you don't have a giant screen.) I included entries for a few articles in both formats to illustrate the difference.

I'll work on the visual/cosmetic aspect later. Right now I just want to nail down the content/usability issues.

[Ziz]

100 views and no opinions/suggestions/thoughts?

[FVBonura]

[raithyn]

Ziz, you clearly put a lot of work into this. I know I searched for a while even with OCR to understand what whip info was in the Adventure Journals so I have some idea of how long it would take to catalogue every single subject.

I'd suggest that you pull out a couple tabs with the lists that your working from. What types of creature are you categorizing? Mammals, lizards, birds, fish, etc. becomes a list that anyone using the sheet can reference quickly instead of wondering if a specific tag (for lack of a better word) exists. You can also create drop down lists for any dedicated columns from these lists for faster cataloging.

Ultimately, I respect how versatile spreadsheets are but feel that a database becomes more useful after a certain point. That can be harder to set up and share without a dedicated website though.

[Whill]

[Whill]