I am trying to use Word to set up a paper filing system. I am trying to use
Word to make a list of my paper files. But I don't know where to go from
here, or how to best perform the task. Should I use Excel?
Personally, I used EndNote (bibliographic database & management software)
for this, since I already had it.
A database system (e.g. FileMaker, 4D, Access) would be best--Excel probably
second best, then Word. But it depends on what you want to do. If all you
want is a flat list, and you plan to write a lot of text about each file,
Word might be fine. But say you wanted to find all files that mention
"Africa." In Word, you are likely to have to search for Africa, and keep
hitting Find Next until you are done. In Excel, if you set the spreadsheet
up efficiently, you could filter the Country column to only show the entries
where Country is Africa. In a database program, you could search for
Africa, and it will show you just those records that contain Africa, which
you could easily flip through.
If you don't structure your system to meet your needs, none of the programs
will satisfy you. If you are thinking in terms of a page in Word per file,
use a database program. If you are thinking in terms of a line per file, I
would use Excel myself but it requires you to categorize the files so that
you are consistently entering information about the same aspect of the file
in the same column--e.g., a Date column that holds all the date information.
Hope that helps,
