14th August 2006, 01:47 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Jan 1970
Posts: 4,415
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You risk corruption in Excel just like Outlook Express.
The data files are not optimized to handle LARGE amounts of data.
By corruption, I mean the file system collapsing (not being able to read the data.
Try storing 60,000 rows of data in Excel, it will crash eventually.
If you think I am wrong and want proof, just google "Excel corrupt" and "Excel crash" and see the hundreds of postings and "tools" available to try and reclaim data.
There is even an obvious hint by Microsoft in the Microsoft Application Recovery tool, the saved document library, (which is why by default, Excel saves itself every 20 minutes or so) and the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Excel is designed for spreadsheets, analysis and reporting, not storing large amounts of data, which is why you are limited to 65,336 rows of data, the absolute edge of the precipice.
I know from experience, when I first started using Excel as a database with 45,000 rows of handtyped data exploded to be unrecoverable and a year's work disappeared forever into the ether.
I reasearched it fully and was amazed how commonplace it is, and switched to Access.
I do however store each year's tweaked data with my own input in Excel spreadsheets (around 42,000 rows each year) as a template, but I have one copy of each spreadsheet on my computer, one copy burned to disc and one copy on a USB drive.
I also have a copy within my Access database, and a copy within my Filemaker database, should anything go wrong with any of them.
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