Excel for Document Tracking: Why Spreadsheets Don't Work

The Classic Scenario

Someone creates an Excel spreadsheet: "Contract Registry." Columns: contract number, client, date, expiry, file location. Works great at first — 20 rows, clean table.

A year later? 500 rows. Three versions — one on the server, one in the director's email, one on the lawyer's laptop. None is current.

8 Reasons Excel Isn't for Document Tracking

1. No link between spreadsheet and file — you type a location but can't click to open
2. Multiple spreadsheet versions — who has the latest?
3. No automation — manual entry for every document: 2-3 hours/month for 50 docs
4. No deadline reminders — contract expiring? Excel won't tell you
5. No row-level access control — everyone sees everything
6. No content search — Excel only searches what you manually typed in
7. Doesn't scale — 5,000 rows becomes slow and unmanageable
8. Doesn't meet legal requirements — not an archive book, no classification marks

Conclusion

Excel is excellent — for calculations and reports. But for document tracking, it's an improvisation that creates more problems than it solves.

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