Secretaries: help! My "lists" are out of control!

[MichMort]

I’ve just taken over the Secretary job with our Hunt, and I am loving it! However, does anyone have any advice about taming the many contact lists that come with the job? I have Members, Friends, Benefactors, folks who host meets, Hunt Ball invitees, Hunter Pace riders, cappers, show sponsors and so on. I inherited most everything in Excel. I would love something shareable, importable, and sortable by multiple fields. I need to be able to print mailing labels, but also to create lists.

Any advice?

[Xctrygirl]

OK lets first discuss, what do you have now?

Excel? Handwritten?

Some other program?

~Emily

[MichMort]

Most of the lists are in Excel, which is not bad to work with, but I would love to have it where I could “click” on relevant items, so I could keep track of who has helped with what events, and to be able to create lists of (for example) horse show sponsors, past members, etc. I think I would have about 25 different categories…

[Xctrygirl]

OK well in Excel there are a whole bunch of ways to design new fields and such and make drop down lists so you could designate entries to be in that group.

Let me see what I can find on the web. I know there are LOTS of great Excel “how to” sites.

~Emily

[MichMort]

That would be great! I looked at several Excel books at the bookstore, and none even mentioned how to print labels (import into Word, etc.)

[rennyben]

Hi, we’re redoing our contacts/email lists and have been using Mail Chimp. You can sort any way you want (type of membership, prospective member, connections, etc) It does what you want it to… but it’s for email. We send most of our info/newsletters email. Official invitations/fixture cards get mailed.

Mail Chimp is free and has been a lifesaver so far. Good luck!

[MichMort]

Thanks! I will check it out!

[Madeline]

How many people are you looking at? Access might be overkill, but it will do exactly what you want.

Problem with Excel is that it really is not a database, and a database is what you want.

[MichMort]

The largest list, of all interested folks, landowners etc. has about 750 contacts…

[BigMick]

I think you could just create columns and fill in the various category name, per column against each person. Then you can filter by whichever list you want to pull. Excel has an autofilter tool. You highlight the header row, click on the autofilter icon, and the filter tool appears.

Column1 Column 2 Column 3
Jane Smith Landowner Member
Bob Smith Landowner (blank)