Now that I’ve covered the basics of how to use a spreadsheet to get a high level overview of something by using graphs, it’s time to go to the other extreme. Spreadsheets can make it very easy to work with a long list of items that have a lot of details that need to be tracked.
A spreadsheet has all of the advantages that any electronic format has. It can be as large as it needs to be, you can search it for the words you want, you can move text around easily, and, of course, handwriting isn’t an issue.
However, a spreadsheet has some additional benefits. It can be organized in ways that most other documents can’t be. Because each detail can be put in a separate column it can be made more clear, and it also becomes more sortable. It can be filtered so you only see the parts you want. It can be automatically formatted, so that cells which fit your desired criteria are highlighted.