The manuals that come with many
computer programs leave you with
the impression that transferring data
from one application to another is
amazingly simple — but it's not.
Programs from different software companies
might be able to "talk" to each
other, but only if the data is set up
exactly the way each program expects. I
experienced this problem firsthand
when trying to automate the chore of
manually entering budgets into
QuickBooks (for job costing) from a
printout of my WinEst estimate.
Enter my trusty spreadsheet, which I
used to create a conduit between the
other two programs. I use Borland
Quattro Pro as my spreadsheet, but
Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 will do
the same job. The only