Gary, I have a challenge that many others may also have.
I run an Aikido dojo and wish to use Numbers to register attendance at classes. I wish to use a data entry form to do so, where the form would be on my iPhone and the data would accumulate on a spreadsheet that I would review on my iMac. The title of the iPhone form would be the date of the class; the first column would consist of the names of my students and the second column a check box; I would check the box if the student was present at class. Upon checking the box, this would transform into a “1” in the spreadsheet, allowing me to count the number of classes attended by each student at the end of the year.
The first column of the spreadsheet would include the students’ names and the top of each column would show the date of each class. The cells in the table would be populated by the “1s” showing each student’s attendance.
Is such a process possible using Numbers? Thanks so much for considering this challenge!
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Mike Clair
It is possible, but it isn't going to be as smooth as you like. This is not the sort of thing spreadsheets are meant for.
For one thing, having dates in columns and students in rows is a bad idea. Dates will extend to infinity, whereas students will not. So I would do students in columns and dates in rows.
Actually, I would do neither. Rows should represent records and columns should represent fields in each record. So to make this a real database, column A would be the date and column B the student's name or ID. That would be the "Student Present" table. Then another table would be the "Class Session" table with column A being the date and perhaps column B being a calculation to show how many students from the other table attended. Maybe column C is notes on the class, like what was taught.
From those two tables you could calculate all sorts of things.
But this will take some work and how you proceed really depends on what you want to get from the table. It is an interesting problem and you can build all sorts of things.
On the other hand, is there maybe a better way to track this? Maybe an app that is custom made for educators to track attendance?