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Spreadsheeting it out

Although I do love the mobility of Pages and Numbers, especially the cloud sync and having the documents up to date on all my computers–I find Google Docs is actually a very powerful alternative. Let me give a quick example of how I used a spreadsheet in Google Docs to keep track of data that I would constantly need to refer to for my thesis.

I decided to create a spreadsheet in Google Docs to keep track of all these important dates, numbers, events, people, etc., both before and after my target time period (1904-1922). Here’s what it looks like:

numbersandtrends

I’ve frozen one row (the headings) and one column (the dates) so that when I scroll through I’ll always know what it is I’m looking at. The right most columns have a variety of information from local events and textbooks, to important regional events and important leaders and officials.

Despite the initial time investment to get it going, once I had it set, I’ve found this kind of setup to be incredibly useful, and I constantly refer to it.

A little side note: I’ve also made sure to put where I am culling the information from below, under each relevant column. That way I can also be sure where exactly to refer back to.

Any tips and tricks to organizing all your data? Let me know in the comments below!

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