My god! Punch those people in the face! They have no idea what they are saying. I would very strongly explain to them that it is beyond words to describe their current system and the inflexibility. This NEEDS a database.

This is where a test of your negotiation skills is going to come in, you need to convince them that they want a new system and that this new system is better and that it's going to help them. Relate this to money for them. Increased accuracy could mean less errors, which can mean higher productivity, which can mean happier customers, which can mean more $$$ (profit). After all, that is all that matters. If you can prove to them that a new system would increase $$$ how could they say no?

The only way to do it the current way would be to:
  1. Determine whether each file follows a consistent format. Chances of that are slim-to-nil.
  2. Locate the actual word document for the customer
  3. Locate all word files that reference the customer. Based on what you have described as the format of the file, there is absolutely no way to tell which other files reference this customer. That would mean you would have to loop through each Word file and...
  4. Determine whether the file contains a reference to that changed customer, if it does, update and save it. Otherwise, close the file.
    • This requires you to open the actual Word document, that means COM interop. Which means you will need to learn how to open/close/search files in Word.


If they insist you do it with the current way, you are extremely close to screwed. If this is the case, I can recommend some paths you should follow for this (you aren't going to like it).

The worst thing about this situation is that it is one of the most simple databases you could ever create.