Recommending a database

[DeborahSun]

I have 2700 contacts on Excel and in your database (in your ?Contacts')  I want to track purchases of 15-20  items  In addition, I want to track networking info, i.e., their profession (teacher), or relationship to me, such as Colleague. so

So I set up two columns in Excel: Customer and Professional

I have made codes for all the items.

Now, however, I need a sophisticated database that will read more than one code in an excel column.  For example:  bk, wb  (Cusomter bought book (bk)  and took a webinar (WB).  t, c   (Professional is a teacher (t), and is also a colleague of mine (c).

To put all this into separate lists is very cumbersome. Also, ripe for the information being written over. (Sally bought a book in 2018, but when I upload customers of 2019 and Sally had bought a video, as it stands now, the 2019 video purchase erases her book purchase)

So, if I want to know who bought books, she is gone. Or, if I want to know who 'graduated from my workshop in 2018, but she bought a book in 2019, well, this person will not be searchable as a workshop graduate!  So, now the limitation of your database (contacts) becomes a big problem to communicate effectively to my students, for example.  this also brings in the issue of trust.  I have to trust my list!

I know. I called many times and was told to export the whole list onto Excel.  However, please tell me what do you recommend for a database company? Filemaker?  Because this coding is very important and took me hours to fit a square peg into a round hole, and much investment of my time.  

I would appreciate an answer that is direct. For example 'Hey we cannot do that, best to protect your coding info with another product like Filemaker.?   Or what?  What can you suggest I do to protect this valuable information that took me years to compile?

[Zoe_H]

Hello @DeborahSun,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community! I do apologize, out database would not be able to read your code in excel when uploading into your account. You would want to use a different database for this or use custom fields instead. Thanks!