Can i collate information from different sheets of a spreadsheet? Say, i have a spreadsheet with a few sheets and each sheet is a record of who owns what thing. Am i able to then pick a name and see which things the name own in all the different sheets?

Not going to be difficult. The secret is in "enumeration" coupled with Vlookup. The concept is to allow the sheets to identify the name that has been selected, enumerate the records that match the name, and perform a VLookup for each unique number. All this is done through basic, rudimentary formulas. It's the creativity that needs to be keen. E-mail me a sample or the workbook itself...and I'll build the model for you. Easy as no-bake cheesecake. (smile)

It's going to be difficult, I think, to collect "groups of non-numerical data" together. This is a very difficult thing to do in a spreadsheet, which has as its primary purpose doing arithmetical functions on numbers.

This isn't to say that Excel isn't often used as a flat file database (address book, shopping list, meeting agenda, day planner, whatever), only that it's not very well suited for those tasks.

So, to answer your question honestly "Can it be done?" -- yes. Can it be done easily, effectively, efficiently, without much care to the data structure or entry by the user? No.

I would recommend learning and using Access or some other relational database to accomplish the task you're starting to outline.

If you present some kind of organizing principles to your spreadsheet, then it might be possible for us to tell you "how you can" do what you want, as well as suggesting some of the pitfalls that you'll undoubtedly fall into.

But the one-word answer to both of your questions is: Yes. With the friendly follow-on that: it depends on your ability to write the necessary lookup equations in Excel and organize your data with some care and precision. And the final follow-on that: I'd never try to do it for anything that was going to be either large or important.

Easy if your using Excel. I've done quite a few and the secret is to have a template layout. So that in your main sheet all your figures are sequencial and in the correct layout.

You can address away from as many sheets as you wish but the best way i've found is to have all the sheets you want to collate link to a single mastersheet and then work with the collated figures in the master sheet. This way you've less messing around with individual sheets.