Coin Spreadsheet Question

I've been testing a new DB for coins. I just care about the type, mint, if graded what grade, purchase price and current value. The DB I am testing does not use Excel BUT gives you the option of adding picts, Unc, Junk, place to add comments, Grade, who graded( you, TPA), ect. I hope the DB goes full production as it will save a lot of people a lot of time( except putting in all your coins!)

Thanks for your reply Nic. I keep working on this and it seems everytime I think I have something that will work, I keep moving towards more complexity, which I'm trying to stay away from unless its just absolutely necessary.

I came up with what I think will be a suitable naming convention for the file names, which will consist of three main parts.

1. The denomination, which may not be completely necessary. But I figured I would use something like 100C for dollar coins (100 cents), 050C for half dollars, 025C for quarters and so on.
2. Include the mint mark
3. Then a random, unique number.

So in the end you would end up with something like 100C.PP.XXXXXX or 100C.P.XXXXXX. That way at a glance I could tell what the denomination was and the mint. I guess I could take it a bit further and use PP, DD, SS, PR, SP to denote proof coins, and silver proofs.

The problem is tying this all together in the spreadsheet. I know how to use the RAND and RANDBETWEEN function and concatenate so that I get the results I want but I wold rather it just pull it all together automatically. I have a column for the Mint mark but no column for denomination since I think it would be rather silly to have a column with nothing but 100C down it.

The other issue is I dont know how to tell the spreadsheet to skip cells and still include all the afore mentioned stuff. I use rows, for example A1, A2, A3, then I skip A4 as it may be a separating row between the lines. Well when you use the smart fill and input your formula then fill down, it fills every row, even the separating rows. So that is a problem.

I know people reading this would say this guy has just lost his mind and taking this way too far and making way too much of it, and they would probably be right. But I like these kinds of challenges as I learn this way. And sometimes its hard to get someone to go along and work through it and come to a solution for how I envision doing it and then say now that we've done that, lets look at this other way that may be easier than what you are doing so that I get the experience and learning of doing it perhaps a more complicated way but then also the simpler way that may even be more effective.

But thats where I stand with all this so far. I've got the basic frame work done, I just need to come up with how to generate the unique id's for each coin so I have unique filenames for each coin, I've already got the rest done.

I think one solution is to just make an extra sheet and have the denomination there in one column (the 100C) and then in the next column, the random, unique number. The issue I ran into with that is getting the sheet with the inventory list on it to pull from that random, unique number list and then delete the number it uses after it sets it on the inventory list so it cannot be used again.

Again, I'm probably over complicating it, but my thought process is if I get through it and solve then along the way I may learn something that will open my eyes and mind to a simpler way.

You're a pretty smart guy there Fuzzy, I think I will have to give that a try and see how that works out.

I like that part of getting pretty complicated. Very possibly one of the many reasons I keep my Excel spreadsheets to bare minimums. Less if possible.
I've read what has been explained here so far about how to document a collection. I feel somewhere along the line the FUN of this hobby is going to make headaches for many way more than it's worth. Look at what you have so far and stop and think how much you really will need or want that in 40 years.

Send me a PM with your email and I can send one of each.

Please be aware that new members are not allowed to use the e-mail system.

Actually if you know the least bit of how to use Excel, making your own layout is just to easy. And if you start out with a really basic format or layout, in the far future you would probably still be using that one. Like I mentioned before. After about 40 or 50 years most of the information is irrilivant. Once nice thing about this post is it made me stop and think what I've been doing myself. I print out all my info so I can easily just flip open a binder for my info. To keep all in order I've labled each type of classification with a number. That is a 100 to 110 for Cent info, 200 to 210 for Twenty Cent Pieces and up from there.
What I finally stopped to think about was how thick this 3 ringed binder has become. Thinking of all on this post made me realize to continue I should shorten even more by printing on both sides of a piece of paper. Sounds dumb that I didn't do this in the past but that's old age for you.
And remember as you make a spreadsheet and your collection grows, how much will you want to record if you have many thousands of coins?