Looking fo an easy way to Create a List of Names and Addresses

[rosindabow]

I am running Office 2004 on a dual 2.5 Ghz PowerMac. I would like to
make a list that can be sorted by Last Names and contain address
information. There also needs to be another couple of columns that I
can enter some other personal stuff into. Is there any place for me to
go to find clear simple directions? Something that will go step by
step, exactly as it needs to be done? A template would be the best
solution as I am a novice user and it can get very confusing. Word is
an extremely powerfull program. Probably more than I need. If I can't
do it easily in Word, is there some other program that is basic and
simple to work with, with loads of templates? Thanks in advance for
your help.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Entourage has an address book you can use, with space for notes. Using a
program designed for addresses is the easy way, and it won't let you do
anything wrong because you just fill in fields. Apple's Address Book
presumably has space for notes too. Those are both already on your
computer.

If for some reason you don't like that idea, I'd say that Excel is better
for this type of list than Word is.

Once you have this list, what do you expect to need to do with it? That's
really the major factor. Also, how much other personal stuff are you
talking about? (e.g., birthdays, or entire history of when you met and your
friendship?) If you are writing a *lot* of text, then Word may be
appropriate after all.

Do you expect to add to the list later, or is this a one-time thing? For a
one-off, typing in Word is easy enough, but adding data later might get
annoying.

I know you asked for "something that will constrain me and not let me do
anything wrong" but I'd rather point you toward "something that will let you
learn the program easily and slowly and customize exactly what you want",
since the second approach is likely to be much more fruitful now and
rewarding for the future. With templates, you are stuck with what the
template designer thought the majority of people would want, instead of what
you want.

Also, what you describe doesn't really need a template. In Word, you would
simply Table|Insert Table with a column for each important piece of data--in
Excel, the layout is already set up and you just put a header on the columns
for what you need and fill in the info.

 

[Elliott Roper]

I am running Office 2004 on a dual 2.5 Ghz PowerMac. I would like to
make a list that can be sorted by Last Names and contain address
information. There also needs to be another couple of columns that I
can enter some other personal stuff into. Is there any place for me to
go to find clear simple directions? Something that will go step by
step, exactly as it needs to be done? A template would be the best
solution as I am a novice user and it can get very confusing. Word is
an extremely powerfull program. Probably more than I need. If I can't
do it easily in Word, is there some other program that is basic and
simple to work with, with loads of templates? Thanks in advance for
your help.

I'm with Daiya on this. Excel

With the merge manager in Word and the list in Excel, you can work
magic.