Slicing and Dicing

Am staring at a dataset that I've got to manipulate.

I have access to many different tools, and yet there's not one that will easily get at the information I need. Excel is probably a number-cruncher's best friend, especially this latest version (Office 2007 -- sweet!).

But what I really need is to crosstab the data. I could probably pivottable this thing to death, but I'll be long gray before I easily get the answer. I turn to Marketsight which is actually a very neat tool for advanced survey analysis (for business users. I have no urge for SAS or SPSS.) But of course, I have to prepare the data before I import -- which brings me back to Excel.

So many people use Survey Monkey to collect data, but I find that tool to be rather limiting. I've been using something from a company called Vanguard. Their VISTA is a nice little tool, easy to program, and great report results when the file is complete. When you can edit the report so that it contains your own analysis (without wrestling with it in Adobe), that will make it more useful.