excel: create your own music database · excel: create your own music database use a spreadsheet as...

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Excel: Create Your Own MusicDatabase

Use a Spreadsheet as aSearchable Database of YourMusic Collection

If you collect records, stamps, antiques, orsomething else, you’ll know how hard it is to keeptrack of your collection. If you use Microsoft Excel ,however, you’ve got the perfect solution at yourfingertips. An Excel spreadsheet makes an idealdatabase for any type of information – not only forstoring it, but for sorting and searching it to quicklyfind the details you need. Read on to learn how toset up and use a database in an Excel spreadsheet,using a music collection as a typical example.

By Don Levison

The Basics of Creating a Database....................

How to Set Up Your Database in Excel ..............

Quickly Sort Your Database into Alphabetical Order

Filtering: Find Data that Fits Your Exact Criteria

This article shows you how to:

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... Create a database of your music collection inMicrosoft Excel

... Sort the data alphabetically for a clearer view

... Use filters to quickly find particular information

PC Knowledge for Seniors Update 2 February/March 11

Microsoft Excel

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Why Use Excel as a Database?

When you want to keep track of a large amount ofinformation in a way that makes it searchable, adatabase program might strike you as theobvious choice. That’s assuming you actually dohave a database program, of course, and the truthis that you probably haven’t. The best-knowndatabase program is Microsoft Access, and unlessyou’ve bought one of the more-expensive editionsof Microsoft Office (or splashed out on aseparate copy of Access) you won’t have that.

More importantly, though, database programs tendto be complex and confusing things to use. If youwanted to keep track of thousands of customers,their contact details, their orders, and so on, a realdatabase program would certainly be the right toolfor the job, and your effort in getting to grips with itwould be worthwhile. However, you and I are nottrying to do anything on that scale: we just need asimple, searchable catalogue of items – really notmuch more than a list. For this, an Excelspreadsheet offers everything we need.

If you don’t have Microsoft Excel, an alternative isCalc, the spreadsheet program included in theOpenOffice.org suite of software . (You can readabout OpenOffice.org in article S050 – SaveMoney! Top Free Programs for Your PC, included inthis update.) Although I’m going to concentrate onExcel in this article, you’ll find that all the steps wecover in this article are identical (or very nearlyidentical) in Calc.

The Basics of Creating a Database

Although we’re not using a ‘real’ database program,what we’re creating certainly is a database: it’s acollection of information stored in a single place

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Most of us don’thave a real

database program …

… and they’remore complicated

than we need

Two terms usedwhen talking

about databases

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PC Knowledge for Seniors Update 2 February/March 11 21

and organised in such a way that we can easily finda certain entry whenever we need to. Before westart, let me introduce you to a couple of termsused in the world of databases which I’ll also beusing in this article:

■ Record: a record is all the information relating toone single entry in our database. In a musicdatabase it would be a single track on an album;in a contacts database it would be the details ofa single person. You could liken a record to acard in an old-fashioned card-file.

■ Field: a field is one piece of information in arecord. In a music database we might havefields for the song title, artist, CD title, tracknumber, and so on; in a contacts database we’dhave fields for first name, last name, address,and phone number, among others.

When we use a spreadsheet as a database, the ‘fields’are the column headings, and the ‘records’ are therows of information we enter beneath the headings.

The most important task in creating a database ischoosing which fields you’re going to need.That’s atwo-part job and it’s worth grabbing a piece ofpaper and a pen to make a list:

Fields

Records

Choose the fieldsyou need

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■ First, you need to decide how much informationyou want to include in each record. In otherwords, which basic headings will you need forthe details?

■ Next, you need to consider whether any of thosefields should be split into two (or more).Let’s takea contacts database as an example. You mightinitially think of having an ‘Address’ fieldcontaining the full address of everyone in yourdatabase. However, if you split this into threefields – ‘Address’, ‘County’ and ‘Postcode’ – you’llbe able to search and sort the information to findeveryone in a certain county. Likewise, if youhave ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ fields ratherthan a single ‘Name’ field, you’ll be able to quicklysort your database alphabetically by surname.

If you need to, you can insert extra fields later on.Just right-click on a column letter at the very top ofyour spreadsheet and choose Insert and a new,blank column will be inserted to the left of the columnyou clicked. However, it’s always far better to do allyour planning at the beginning and start off with allthe fields (column headings) you’re going to need!

How to Set Up Your Database in Excel

When you’ve determined which fields you’ll need inyour database, you’re ready to create it. Just followthese steps:

1. Start Microsoft Excel. When you do this, Excelwill create a new blank spreadsheet ready foryou to start work immediately.

2. Leave the first two rows of the spreadsheetblank and enter your field names into the cellsof row 3 (see screenshot on page 6). I’m



Split informationinto a greater

number of fields

Enter yourfield names

across a row

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creating a music database as the example forthis article, in which every ‘record’ will be a trackfrom a music album, and I’m using these sevenfield names in the seven columns from A to G:

■ Album: the name of the album on which thistrack appears.

■ Album Artist: the name of the artist given forthis album.

■ Artist: the name of the artist given for thisparticular track. Often this will be the same asthe ‘Album Artist’, but not always: for acompilation that includes tracks by a number ofdifferent artists I can enter ‘Various Artists’ in the‘Album Artist’ field and the artist for eachindividual track in the ‘Artist’ field.

■ Title: the name of this track.

■ Track: the track number of this song on thealbum.

■ Year: the year in which the album was released.

■ Media: since some of my music is on vinyl,some on CDs and some on my PC, I’ll enter LP,CD or PC in this field so I know where to look forthe album.This also means that I can easily findout later how much of my music collection exists(for example) on my PC.

If you’re also creating a music database, you’llwant to use at least some of these fields, andperhaps all of them. However, they’re onlysuggestions: the information you decide to includeis entirely up to you. For instance, you may not beinterested in noting the year in which an albumwas released, but you may want to include a



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‘Genre’ field to note the style of music (so that youcan quickly find all your jazz recordings, forexample), or a ‘Rating’ column in which you giveeach track a score out of 10 so that you can easilyfind all your top-rated tracks.

Likewise, the order in which you place the fields isup to you. In a database, the order of fieldsdoesn’t really matter at all, so arrange them in anyway you like.

3. A sensible next step is to save yourspreadsheet. Press the F12 key on yourkeyboard, which makes a Save As dialogappear, select a folder to save it in, type a namefor it such as ‘Music Database’, and then clickthe Save button. From this point onwards,remember to frequently press Ctrl+S as youwork to update the saved copy of this file.

4. The final step is easy to explain, but it’s the onethat takes the time! Starting from the rowimmediately beneath your row of field names,start entering the details of all the items in youwant to include in your database. For a musicdatabase, of course, this means workingthrough your entire collection, typing the detailsof every track. It can be a rather tedious job and,needless to say, you don’t have to do it in asingle sitting: when you’ve had enough, saveand close your spreadsheet, and return to itlater when you’re in the mood to do some more.

Save regularly asyou work!

Now beginentering your

database’s records

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Note that you don’t have to type your records in anyparticular order.The sorting features I’ll explain latermake that unnecessary. For a music database, justgrab the first album that comes to hand, type itsdetails, then grab the next, and so on.

Rules to follow when entering information

The whole point of a database is to make it easy to findparticular information whenever you need it.To ensurethat your database is as helpful as it can be, keep thesethree rules in mind as you enter information:

■ Enter identical information the same wayevery time: wherever a particular artist’s nameis used, for example, always type it the sameway. If you sometimes enter it as ‘Bob James’and sometimes as ‘James, Bob’, your databasewill regard these as two different people, andany searching and sorting you do based onartist name will go awry.

Avoid confusionby keepingnames the same!

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■ Fill in every field: don’t leave any blanks in therecords you enter. If there are certain details youdon’t have available, choose something to enterto indicate that you don't have the information(such as ‘Unknown’) and type it the same wayevery time for all unknown information, as in therule above.

■ Don’t leave any blank rows: for Excel torecognise all your rows of records as one singledatabase, make sure you use every row with noempty lines.

Quick tips for entering your information

There’s no denying that you’ll have to do quite a lot oftyping while you’re creating your database. (After all,if it were only a small amount of typing, you probablywouldn’t need a database to organise it in the firstplace!). Fortunately, Excel offers a few shortcuts thatcan make the job a little quicker and easier:

■ Move quickly from cell to cell: as you’reentering the individual fields of a record acrossa row, press the Tab key to jump into the cell tothe right to fill in the next field. When you finishone record and want to start entering the nexton the row below, press the Enter key.

■ Make the most of AutoComplete: when youstart typing something that you’ve previouslytyped into a cell further up in the same column,Excel will often ‘autocomplete’ the entry for you.In other words, following the character or twoyou’ve just typed, you’ll see what Excelassumes will be the rest of that entry, shown inwhite-on-black. If this suggested text is what youwere intending to type, just press Tab to acceptit and jump to the next cell. If you were intendingto type something different, ignore Excel’ssuggestion and keep typing.



No empty cells …

… and noblank lines

Fast navigationbetween cells

and rows

Excel will offerto finish what

you type

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■ Quickly copy the entry from the cell above:in our music database, the same text appearsseveral times in a column: as you enter thedetails for an album, you’ll enter the same albumname, artist name and year for each track. TheAutoComplete feature mentioned above mayhelp to speed this up, but there’s another trickyou can use: hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys andpress the , (comma) key, and Excel will copy thecontents of the cell immediately above into thecurrent cell.

Make your data easier to work with

When you start entering the details into yourspreadsheet, you’ll fairly quickly run into twoproblems. The first is that all your cells are toonarrow to hold the information you’re typing intothem: the text overlaps into the next cell, orbecomes ‘chopped off’ so that you can only see thefirst word or two.

The second problem is that as you enter more andmore records, and work your way down the rows,your field headings are scrolled upwards and out ofsight. Although you can probably remember whichfields you created and what order they come in, it’seasier to be able to see them while you work!

Let’s set about fixing those two problems.

■ Make the columns wider: move the mouse upto the dividing line between one column letterand the next, and the pointer shape will changeto a vertical beam with an arrow crossing it fromleft to right.



Easily repeatthe text of thecell above

Columns aretoo narrow …

… and headingsscroll upwards outof sight

Move the mouseto the joinbetween twocolumns anddouble-click

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When it does, simply double-click. Excel willautomatically widen the column to the left of themouse so that it’s wide enough to fit the longestitem of text contained in that column. In the sameway, double-click the dividing lines between theremaining columns to widen them.

■ Keep your field headings in view: start byclicking in the cell immediately below your firstfield name (this should be the cell at row 4,column A). If you use Excel 2010 or 2007,select the View tab on the Ribbon, click theFreeze Panes button and then click FreezePanes on the menu that appears. If you use anearlier version of Excel, choose Window >Freeze Panes. You’ll see a thin line appearbelow the row containing your field names,indicating that this row has been ‘frozen’.However far downwards you scroll now, you’llfind that this row remains fixed in place and isconstantly visible.



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Quickly Sort Your Database intoAlphabetical Order

Once you’ve finished entering the necessaryinformation into your database, you’re ready to seehow all that work pays off! The point of thisdatabase, as I mentioned earlier, is to enable you tolook at your data in various ways and quickly locatethe information you need. Let’s start with one of thesimplest things you might want to do from time totime – arrange the information alphabetically.

When you were creating your database, youprobably didn’t type the records in any particularorder.The great thing about a database is that youdon’t need to. For my music database, I was simplypicking CDs off the rather-disorganised shelf andtyping the details of each track they contained. Icould have done it in an even-less-organised way,by entering track details in a random order fromdifferent CDs. It would have been hard to keeptrack of what I’d done and what I hadn’t, of course,but as long as I eventually included every track onevery CD, my database would be complete andworking, regardless of the order in which I enteredthe details.

Having done that, I might want to see my databaseorganised alphabetically by album or artist, or byany of the other field names I created. Excel refersto this as ‘sorting’ and makes it very easy to do:

1. Start by clicking any cell below the field by whichyou want to sort. For example, to sort yourdatabase alphabetically by artist name, clicksomewhere below the ‘Artist’ field (or on the‘Artist’ field itself). It must be a cell that containstext, though, not a blank cell above or belowyour information.



You can typerecords into yourdatabase in anyorder at all

It can be easilysorted wheneveryou like

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2. If you use Excel 2010 or 2007, switch to theData tab on the Ribbon and look at the sectionnamed Sort & Filter, where you’ll see the twobuttons pictured in the margin. If you use anearlier version of Excel, you’ll find these sametwo buttons side-by-side on the toolbar .

3. Click the AZ button (the upper of the two inExcel 2010/2007, or the leftmost in earlierversions) and Excel will instantly sort all therecords in your database alphabetically basedon the field you chose (in my case, by artistname, as illustrated in the next screenshot). Indoing so, of course, the details in all the othercolumns are shuffled around so that everyrecord remains intact.

Your database will stay sorted the way you’vechosen until you decide to sort it differently.Whenever you like, you can click elsewhere and clickthat AZ button again: click in the ‘Album’ column tosort alphabetically by album name, for example, or inthe ‘Year’ column to sort numerically by year with theoldest albums appearing at the top. If you preferthings ‘upside-down’, the ZA button will do theopposite – sorting counter-alphabetically for text, orfrom highest to lowest for fields containing numbers.



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Remember that Excel only sorts your data whenyou click the AZ or ZA button. After sorting yourdatabase in a certain way, you may scroll to thebottom and type new records into more rows, andthose won’t be sorted. (Of course, that’s a jolly goodthing – you don’t want those new rows jumpingupwards to a new position as soon as you’ve typedthem!) When you’ve finished adding the newrecords, just follow the same steps again to sort theentire database, including its latest additions.

Filtering: Find Data that Fits YourExact Criteria

In many cases, simply sorting your databasealphabetically or numerically by a particular fieldwill help you find the information you need fairlyquickly. However, sometimes you’ll want to knowsomething far more specific than simple sorting cantell you, and this is where a database is much moreuseful than a simple list.

Here’s an example of the type of thing I mean. Imentioned earlier that my database includes a‘Media’ field where I specify whether a track existson CD, LP or my PC. Something I may want to dois to find out which tracks by a particular artist Ihave on CD. I won’t find this out by sorting, butExcel offers a far more powerful feature that makeslight work of it: filtering.

Let’s assume you’ve set up a music database usingthe same field names I did, and you want to findthat same information. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Begin by clicking one of the cells in your databasethat contains text; any cell will do, as long as it’snot a blank cell above or below your data.



Sort againafter addingnew records

Example: findtracks by acertain artist thatare on CD

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2. Next we need to switch on a feature named‘AutoFilter’. In Excel 2010/2007, switch to theData tab on the Ribbon and click the Filterbutton in the Sort & Filter section. In earlierversions of Excel, open the Data menu andchoose Filter > AutoFilter.

3. If you look at the row containing your fieldnames now, you’ll see that each field name hasa little button containing an arrowhead beside it.These little buttons will remain visible until youswitch off the AutoFilter feature.

You can switch off the AutoFilter feature byfollowing step 2 again but, unless these arrowbuttons particularly offend you, there’s no harm inleaving this feature switched on: it gives you fewersteps to follow next time you want to filter your data!

4. Click the arrow button at the right of the Artistfield and a panel will appear like the onepictured in the next screenshot. In this panelyou’ll see a list of all the artist names included inyour spreadsheet. If you use Office 2010 or2007, you’ll see that each artist name has a tickbeside it: start by clicking on (Select All), whichremoves the ticks from all the artists in the list.(Users of older Excel versions won’t see ticksand don’t need to do this.)



Click the Filterbutton in Excel

2010/2007

Arrow buttonsappear beside

each field name

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5. Now click the artist for whom you want to findout how many tracks you have on CD (in mycase, ‘Bob James’). If you use Excel 2010/2007,click the OK button at the bottom of this panel.

6. You’ll see the result instantly: most of thecontents of your database have (seemingly)vanished, and you’ll only see records for whichthe ‘Artist’ is the name you just clicked. Excelhas ‘filtered’ your data to hide every record witha different artist.

7. We’re halfway there, but what we want to knowis which of these remaining tracks are on CD,rather than on LP or computer. In the same way,click the arrow button at the right of the Mediafield, click (Select All) to remove all the ticks inthat list if you use Excel 2010/2007, then clickCD (followed by OK in Excel 2010/2007).

8. The result, pictured in the next screenshot, tellsme exactly what I want to know. Excel is nowshowing only tracks whose artist is Bob Jamesand which I have on CD.



Click the arrowbutton in theArtist field

In Excel2010/2007,remove thetick beside(Select All)

Click theartist you’reinterested in

Click OK

Excel now showsthe tracks by thisone artist only

Filter againto specify CDtracks only

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In Excel 2010/2007, if you look closely at the littlearrow buttons in the Artist and Media fields, you’llsee that they now also contain a tiny filter symbol(actually a picture of a funnel). Holding the mouseover one of those buttons tells you how the columnis being filtered: for the ‘Artist’ button, for example,a little message appears saying Artist: Equals“Bob James”.

In a nutshell, then, filtering allows you to chooseand combine relevant criteria from particularcolumns (in this case, ‘Bob James’ and ‘CD’), andExcel hides any records that don’t match thosecriteria.You can choose criteria from as many or asfew columns as you need.

When you’ve finished examining the results of yourfiltering, you’ll probably want Excel to display allyour records again:

■ In Excel 2010/2007, click the Clear button in theSort & Filter section of the Data tab.

■ In older versions of Excel, choose Data > Filter> Show All.



Remove the filtersto see all your

data again

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Use custom filtering to choose morecomplex criteria

The basic filtering steps given above will often be allyou need to identify particular collections of data.Indeed, in Excel 2010/2007, this basic filtering iseven more useful than in older versions, becauseyou can tick two or more items in the panel thatappears before finally clicking the OK button.

However, the filtering options don’t end there. Youcan also set up ‘custom filters’ that allow you muchmore control over which items are shown andwhich are not. For example, you could filter your‘Year’column to display albums whose release datewas greater (more recent) than 1980, or filter your‘Title’ column to show only songs whose namecontains the word ‘Love’, or filter the artist columnto show only tracks whose artist is something otherthan ‘Bob James’ (or, indeed, combine all three ofthose examples).

Here’s how to set up one of these custom filters:

1. Start by clicking the arrow button beside thefield you want to filter.

2. In Excel 2010/2007, move the mouse to TextFilters (or Number Filters) and click CustomFilter. In older versions of Excel, click(Custom…).

3. Now you’ll see the little dialog pictured in thenext screenshot. Open the drop-down listcontaining the word ‘equals’ and choose fromthe criteria available, such as ‘does not equal’or ‘contains’.



You can specifymore advancedcombinationsof options

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4. In the box to the right, either type a few letters orwords (or a number, if this column containsfigures rather than text), or open the list to pickan entry.

5. If you need to be even more specific, a secondpair of boxes below can be used in the sameway. Between them you can choose between‘And’ and ‘Or’: using ‘And’, only records thatmatch the criteria in both sets of boxes will beshown; with ‘Or’ a record will be shown if itmatches the criteria in either set of boxes.

6. Finally, click OK and Excel will filter your recordsbased on the criteria you’ve set.

In the example pictured below, I’ve used both setsof boxes to specify that I want to see only therecords for which the artist’s name begins with a ‘B’but is not ‘Bob James’.



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