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I backpack as a hobby. My packing list is a spreadsheet broken down into sections such as "worn clothing", "packed clothing", "shelter system", etc. Each line gets a function (shelter), a description (tent, tarp, bivy sack, etc), and a quantity (1x tent, 2x pairs of socks, etc). I think it would be neat to let the spreadsheet estimate a pack weight as well so I added another column for weight calculations. It also a little pie chart so I can see what sections of my pack are adding the most weight (food, clothing, whatever).
I have a second spreadsheet with the weights of various items I use but it's a little tedious to copy/paste the weight every time I want to generate a new packing list, especially since I like to swap out different pieces of kit to dial my pack in for various environments and seasons. I'm not much of a programmer so I'm wondering what the easiest way around this is. My first thought was to figure out how to create a drop-down menu for each cell with the item choices pre-loaded and have the spreadsheet call the appropriate weight. For example, for my "shelter" cell, I would create a drop-down that had my winter tent, my hammock, my bivy, etc and then the "weight" cell would auto-populated based on my selection. This seems like an inelegant solution that's going to require a lot of upkeep so I'm wondering if a simple data-base in something like OpenOffice Base or MS Access might be be more appropriate. From my amateur viewpoint it seems like the database might be more work upfront but would be less maintenance in terms of upkeep every time I add/remove a piece of kit from my stockpile. (I'm a bit of a gear-do, I'll admit). Or is it six of one, half-dozen of the other?
I think you could easily accomplish this with most spreadsheet programs with little upkeep. Have your data sheet with the list of all your items, have your "packing" sheet with drop downs, and then have a sum cell with a formula which sums added vlookups. The vlookups will use the drop down cell to find the weight in the data sheet and then add all the weights together, e.g., "=(vlookup(A1, Shelter!A1:D14, 4, false))+(vlookup(A1, Clothing!A10:D20, 4, false))" and repeat for however many categories with A being the item list and D being the weight. For quantities you could add another column with that number in between the dropdown boxes and then include that in sum formula cell.
The dropdown cells can autopopulate choices from your datasheet if you designate the list range. If you do it this way, the only "upkeep" would be to fill out the item and the weight in the appropriate range for that category of equipment and the dropdown selection should autopopulate from that sheet or list. You could use different sheets for each category and have that sheet be the designated range.
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