Tip of the Week September 15, 2014

Include volunteer names on ‘child’ records in Excel reports.

In databases, a ‘child’ record is a piece of information that relates back to one particular record. One volunteer record can have multiple service records, just like one parent can have multiple children.

Because Excel Spread Sheet reports are designed to be able to contain detailed volunteer information such as service entries and checklist dates, it is necessary to create different worksheets within the Excel workbook for this information. Help topic 2165 explains more about how this works. By default, these ‘child’ records relate back to the ‘parent’ record using the volunteer number.

However, if this is confusing, you can change the reports to use the volunteer’s name in place of the volunteer number. To do this, select “Include volunteer names in ‘child’ records” on the Options tab when you create the Excel report.

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