Creating Excel database to track inventory

Question

I will try to explain what I would like to achieve, and since I have not looking for ready-to-go solution, I hope you will give me pointers what to look for.

So, I have one sheet in Excel (Libre, Apache whatever) where I want to keep track of the inventory in offices. I don't have many of them, thus I have opted for something simpler that Access or any other database

So for example in Office 122 I have Dell computer XZY

Now, on next sheet 2 I would like to keep properties of that particular computer (as table for example)

1. Dell computer XZY | CPU Xenon | Nvidia 980 | RAM 16GB
2. Dell computer AAA | CPU I7 | AMD 290X | RAM 32GB

and so on

Now, on the first sheet I have columns

Office | Computer | Specs

I would like to be able set column Computer from drop down selection name of the computer from sheet 2 eg Dell computer XZY, and to print out its specs in Info column automatically from the sheet 2 which holds computer names and specs of the computers so it looks something like

Office 122 | Dell Computer AAA (this should be drop down selection) | I7, AMD 290X, 32GB

I hope I was clear enough :). As I said, I don't expect you to make me the sheet (wouldn't mind, but not expecting), just to tell me what I am looking for and where to search since I didn't have any experience with this kind of "databases" in excel.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Part 1 make dropdown

On sheet2 make columns

Restrict your cell to values from a list of items

1. select cell
2. select data validation
3. select allow list
4. select range

Thats it

http://blogs.technet.com/b/hub/archive/2011/06/09/restrict-data-entry-in-excel-with-lists.aspx

Part two -lookup value

With excel formula VLOOPUP you can loopup a value, witch mist be unique and you can select the row which value it should return. Something like this

=VLOOKUP(B4,Sheet2!B:C,2,FALSE)