Tracking Important Dates & Events

Keeping track of important dates and events is critical to successful genealogical research.  If you search any of the online databases, your starting point is usually a name and date. Your research will go quicker and be more effective if you have this information quickly at hand.

The best method I've found of tracking dates is using a spreadsheet (like Excel).  Spreadsheets are great because you can have several different worksheets to track specific information - while still keeping it all together.

I have different worksheets (or tabs) in my Excel spreadsheet for different types of dates and events. For example, one worksheet in my spreadsheet is devoted to tracking birth and death dates. Another worksheet tracks marriage (and divorce dates).  I also have a worksheet set up to track special event dates.   And I can can more worksheets later if I decide I want to track something else.

This arrangement works well as I can easily go back and forth between worksheets to get the dates I need when doing research.

I can add as many columns as I need on each worksheet too.  This makes tracking more information helpful. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you add a lot of columns, not all of them will print on a regular 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper.  I don't personally mind this - as I don't need to print every column - but I still like having the information there so I can refer to it later.  The worksheet I use to track birth and death dates contains more columns than I can print.   

The other real advantage to using a spreadsheet to track important dates is having the ability to sort data to make it easier to find info.  Most spreadsheet let you "sort" or "filter" data by column heading, which makes it easy to alphabetize your data, or sort it by date, etc.

I like to track all the information I may need in future research. Below is an example of the columns I've set up in my birth/death date worksheet.

• First Name
• Middle Name (initial)
• Maiden Name
• Last Name
• Birth Date
• Where Born
• Death Date
• Where Died
• Where Buried
• Cause of Death

I've also added a "comments" column to all of my worksheets - so I can add more notes as applicable.  Tracking the cause of death is helpful in keeping keeping track of medical histories.  If you like, you can add even more columns, such as, "Funeral Arrangements" (to track who handled the funeral arrangements); "Obit" (to track which publication handled the obituary), etc. Possibilities are endless.


If you don't have Excel on your computer, that's okay.  You can use one of the other spreadsheet programs.  Works Spreadsheet and Quattro are two other popular programs.  If you don't have any of these programs, you can download Open Office for free and use their spreadsheet program (called Calc).  

I personally prefer Excel because I think it's very intuitive and easy to use - but everybody is different. Whichever program you use, try setting up a spreasheet to track these important dates and events.  You might be surprised how much easier it makes things in the long run.