Suggest a new method, ANYTHING.

[sinapourazima]

Let me explain the situation: I have a small store. At first I was expecting to have less than 200 items in the store. I stored the description, the selling price, and the purchase price, and a goods-code (an integer between 1 and 200) in separate columns with about 200 rows. I was hoping to remember all the goods-code #'s after a while. I used =vlookup and set my sheets to give me instant daily, 5-day, and monthly sales and profits; and I wrote simple macros to time-stamp and total each sale, and simple macros to take care of inventory. All successfully, with your help of course (many thanks again to those who responded, and you can check my previous posts).
Now, it appears that the number of items is increasing and I see no end anytime soon. I want to find a way to (maybe use DataValidation) or some kind of search to enter just a few adjacent letters of the description and access the goods-table. Changes to the other routines are possible whereas they are all fresh in my mind.
Any suggestions are welcome. (Except, of course, readymade code from major companies, first because I will be tied to their will (because I assume they won't let me understand and alter their code according to my situation and will), and second because I really enjoy playing around with Excel and learning it, and third because this program is for my own store.
My thought is to invest and get a barcode reader, attach it to my pc, and stick a barcode on every item in the store. I assume that that barcode reader transforms the vertical barcode lines into an integer in excel and I can use my present method (maybe with some slight modifications)
Thanks for all your suggestions.
Sina.

[FDibbins]

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