MS Excel – How to Add Names and Addresses to a Searchable Database

© 2009 Ugur Akinci
If you’d like to create a searchable address database in MS Excel, the best way to do it is to assign a separate column to every data component with which you’d like to sort or search your database.
For example, here is a good example of how to do it:

In this example, you can sort the records by State or you can quickly find the number of people living in a  certain ZIP code, etc.
Here is a bad way to do it:

Why bad?
Because it is impossible with an Excel sheet like this to search by City, State, ZIP, First Name, or Last Name.
NOTE: To stretch the column widths to fit the content, 1) select all records by clicking on the top-left cell, and then 2) select Format > Column > Autofit Selection from the menu.