Where to get consultation for my huge excel model?

[trvrt30]

Hi all,


I have found this board extremely helpful for individual problem solving. With all the knowledge here, I also thought it might be helpful for recommending professional excel/access experts.


For the last year I've been building/using a somewhat complex and dynamic test analysis program in Excel (Mac 2010) for my SAT tutoring business in NYC. Basically, I have encoded all of the existing SAT tests into excel so that I can receive students' test results and automatically produce score reports, recommendations, and charts personalized to each student.


I don't know any VBA so I've been doing this entirely with formulas. Furthermore, I don't know how to structure all this in a way to preserve working memory (I'm just doing what I need to do to make it functional as I go). So you can imagine how painfully slow this thing gets as it gets bigger and bigger.


And as my business has grown, so has the demand for these reports. It is past time for me to optimize this thing both in terms of limiting the number of steps required for report creation/printing and increasing speed of calculation. (For example, it takes at least 5 minutes to refresh certain pivot tables or copy/paste certain data; and a good 10 minutes simply to save my file; worst of all, I'd say about 15% of the time I take these actions, excel just crashes).


I'd really like to find someone with VBA knowledge and perhaps an understanding of how to link Excel and Access (since I'm starting manage so much data in Excel, I think Access makes more sense) who could help me optimize this model. If you have any ideas of specific people or places to look into, or how much I can expect to pay for this sort of thing, that would be very much appreciated.


Thanks,

Tim

 

[bobhc]

Good day trvrt30


With the size of the workbook I would definitely import it into Access, reports quires forms all would be better suited to your needs.


As for professionals to help your reconstruct your workbook you must be surrounded by them in your area.


My own opinion is, as you point out your workbook is growing, then bite the bullet and migrate it all to Accessyou

 

[SirJB7]

Hi, trvrt30!


First of all welcome to Chandoo's website Excel forums. Thank you for your joining us and glad to have you here.


As a starting point I'd recommend you to read the green sticky topics at this forums main page. There you'll find general guidelines about how this site and community operates (introducing yourself, posting files, netiquette rules, and so on).


Among them you're prompted to perform searches within this site before posting, because maybe your question had been answered yet.


Feel free to play with different keywords so as to be led thru a wide variety of articles and posts, and if you don't find anything that solves your problem or guides you towards a solution, you'll always be welcome back here. Tell us what you've done, consider uploading a sample file as recommended, and somebody surely will read your post and help you.


And about questions in general...


If you haven't performed yet the search herein, try going to the topmost right zone of this page (Custom Search), type the keywords used in Tags field when creating the topic or other proper words and press Search button. You'd retrieve many links from this website, like the following one(s) -if any posted below-, maybe you find useful information and even the solution. If not please advise so as people who read it could get back to you as soon as possible.


And about this question in particular...


In this website you'll find many members that have very high skills not only in formulas but in VBA code, despite of the badge below their nicks. The contributions at this forums are free, so if you want to get any feedback or solution or file, anything, you'd follow the guidelines found at the green sticky posts and surely someone might be able to help you. Or at least to try to do it.


Regards!

 

[SirJB7]

Hi, trvrt30!


I don't know if a priori I agree with my old (very) friend b(ut)ob(ut)hc. I have to give a look to your workbook to see if it should be all migrated to Access, just the data to a back-end Access (or PowerPivot or SQL) and keep the front end in Excel, or tune it to keep it all as a workbook.


I'd consider too hardware resources, but we don't know neither how much does your workbook weights (not only in disk space but in memory usage when loaded and used) nor you equipment specs.


Regards!

 

[Luke M]

Since this is Chandoo's site, I feel obliged to at least post a link to his page:

http://chandoo.org/wp/excel-consulting/


Beyond that, you are more than welcome to post things here or search online for free help. Or, there may be some here on the forums willing to do some paid consulting. Or, you can check out fellow XL blogger's page here:

http://dailydoseofexcel.com/excel-consulting-buyers-guide/


I'd also recommend reading the post above if thinking about starting your own freelancing operation.

 

[SirJB7]

@Luke M

Hi!

I think that my subconscious deliberately omitted that link since that guy lowered our agent's commissions from 0,001% to 0,000999%.

Regards!

 

[trvrt30]

Thanks so much Luke! Those are both extremely helpful links. I've emailed Chandoo and learned a lot from the Daily Dose of Excel post.


Sir JB7 -- thanks for your feedback and for informing me how the site works.


bob -- thanks for the idea about Access. I think you're probably right, but the thing is I would need a consultant to execute that. I would love to learn how to do it myself, but at this point I just don't have the time.


Thanks again to all three of you!

--Tim