1. File Processing with Excel’s List

2. File Concepts
File consists of a group of records. Each record contains a group of fields.
Example: Student file
SID Sname Major Sex GPA
S1 Peter CIS M 3.0
S3 Paul ACCT M 2.7
S5 Mary CIS F 3.2

3. Excel’s List
An Excel list consists of columns and rows of data structured in a specific way:
Each column contains the same category of data in every row in the column(similar to a field in a file)
Each row in the list contains all of the fields of data for one entity (a person,organization, object, etc.) similar to a record in a file.
The first row of the list must contain a unique name at the top of each column.
There can be no blank rows in the list (there can be blank cells in a column, but the entire row cannot be empty)

4. List Example

5. Key Field & Grouping Field
Key field: A value of the field uniquely determines a record in a file.
Example: CID field
Grouping field: A filed that can be used to group records:
Example: City field, Rating field.

6. Basic File/List Processing
Sorting:
Data/Sort
Two level sorting: Data/Sort/Add level
Selecting records meeting criteria
Data/Filter
Text Filter:
Begin with, End with, Contains,
Number Filter:
Top n, Above Average, Below Average
Date Filter:
Before, After, Next week, Last week, This month, Next quarter, This year, All dates in the period, etc.
Compute subtotals
Must sort list by grouping fields first
Data/Subtotal
Compute subtotals of two grouping fields

7. Example Student file What information can be retrieved from this file?
SID Sname Major Sex GPA
S1 Peter CIS M 3.0
S3 Paul ACCT M 2.7
S5 Mary CIS F 3.2
What information can be retrieved from this file?

8. Calculated Field
A field whose value is derived from existing fields, for example, Age can be calculated from DateOfBirth.
Age=Year(Today())-Year(DOB) Or
Age=(Today()-DOB)/365

9. Calculated Grouping Field
Examples:
Age group
Income group
Academic performance group