Intuition tells us we can't put our records into spreadsheets. Most people have a spreadsheet programs on their computers, and it's time to put these programs to work on our family history mysteries. Spreadsheets are not new. We've had them as long as we've had ledger paper. It was a useful tool for lining up numbers, but it couldn't automatically update the ledger when I changed one of the numbers.
Electronic spreadsheets simulate ledger paper.
Typically, a spreadsheet is a list of similar items, with each row representing a particular item and each column representing some particular characteristic of those items. For example, if your family history program can export a report to a spreadsheet, you might make a list of names, birth dates, birthplaces, death dates, and death places. The spreadsheet would lay the information out so that each row represented a person in your report and each column represented, say, the person's name, birth date, or death information. If your data is like mine, some entries are missing. Corel's Quattro Pro .