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I was sitting here making an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of dates/addresses etc, but I was wondering what everyone else does. I see that some people keep information on note cards, so how do you store those and keep track? I'd love some organizational ideas! My desk is covered in envelopes, pieces of paper, notebooks, etc. with addresses.

Thanks!!

I have a sheet of paper with a list of people I have sent out to and the date I sent it out. I put it on my bulletin board in my room.

I have a huge ring binder full of plactic wallets and I keep every thing in there. I cut out little pices of paper for each plastic wallet and write on it the address I am using the date I have sent it and the date I have recieved something back. I keep requests that are already prepared to be sent in here aswell then when I send them I fill in the sent date and move that walet to the section of my ring binder with the autos I am waiting on. If I get a reply I fill in on the little piece of paper the date I recieved something back and move it to the front of the folder with other successes, I put the envelope in the walet with the paper so that I have proof of authenticity and if the celeb has sent back a signed scrapbook page that goes in there aswell and any signed photos get hung in frames on my wall
hope this helped

im thinking about making a scrap book with my sucessful addresses in along with signed autograph and date sent and recieved.

I use Excel too, it's worked pretty well for me.

I also keep an excel spread sheet. I lost all my records when my computer crashed about 5 years ago, so now I have everything backed up on a zip drive.

Pages in my spread sheet include names and addresses I have mailed to (one page per year) for each of the past 5 years.
I also have separate pages for autographs received (again one per year) and a sheet listing all successes over the past (nearly) 40 years. As well as a list of people that I intend to send to but have not mailed to yet as well as their addresses

In a separate file I have scans (I have a 16 gig zip drive) with scans of every autograph with separate pages for different "collections" as well as (on another zip drive) a master file. Not included in my collection (but I have a file of scans for fakes-AP PP stamp sec etc.) I do have some exceptions simply due to my laziness (I still have part of my collection that has not been scanned).

I am retired (just over 6 years) so I have more time for keeping track of my collection.

I keep both my outstanding requests and my full list of autographs as Google docs files.

I keep names and dates on a basic Word file.. pretty boring.

Excel, with all sorts of completely unnecessary fancy conditional formatting to make it seem more important than it actually is. Name, address used, date sent, date received seem to be the useful fields.

I email it to myself from time to time using a webmail account in case the PC dies, but don't think I'd get as stressed about losing it now as I would have done when I started. I store the autos in the order they arrive, which provides a marginally interesting time line but makes them almost impossible to find quickly.

I use the spreadsheets also, but use the free OpenOffice version that can be found online. The biggest benefit is being able to find a request fast by using the search function in case I need to update it or share information.

The only difference is that once I get a success, I don't save the address. It gets reported here and on another site and (hopefully) gets included in the respective databases so that I don't need to keep track of them. Besides, once I send to a certain individual I seldom will send to that person again, so there is no need to keep track of addresses.