Looking for Ideas - Item order tracking sheet?

[Battletoads]

I have 64 different items falling under 18 different categories and I want to make a table tracking what items get ordered, by who and when. I'm just looking for ideas/templates on how best to track this. I have a simple table with each individual item as a header, the categories for each item merged & centered in a row above, the only problem is obviously there are 64 columns and the items have long names so tracking by hand involves a lot of scrolling. I started a VBA module which uses rowcounts to paste info into a table, but again, with 64 items, I'll end up with 64 text boxes.

Anyways, just wanted to get some ideas on how I could track this as easily as possible (as I won't be the only one to input info). I want to eventually use this info in a pivot table to track what items get ordered the most and when, etc.

[FDibbins]

To best describe or illustrate your problem you would be better off attaching a dummy workbook. The workbook should contain the same structure and some dummy data of the same type as the type you have in your real workbook - so, if a cell contains numbers & letters in this format abc-123 then that should be reflected in the dummy workbook.

To attach a file to your post,
click advanced (next to quick post),
scroll down until you see "manage file",
click that and select "add files" (top right corner).
click "select files" find your file, click "open" click "upload" click 'done" bottom right. click "submit reply"

Once the upload is completed the file name will appear below the input boxes in this window.
You can then close the window to return to the new post screen.

[Battletoads]

Essentially working with this, I replaced the item names with generic "item" which makes the columns smaller so it's easier to read, but as I said the items names are much longer so the scrolling is much further. Also since the cells will only be filled with, at the very most, 2 digit numbers, the wide columns with small numbers in the cells isn't so easy on the eyes. Just looking for ideas on how I can make this more visually appealing.

[Pete_UK]

You could think about "grouping" the columns by different categories (it's on the Data tab of the ribbon), so that you can expend and contract them as you wish.

Hope this helps.

Pete