I need to make a contact list for work. Which MS Office program is best?

Personally, I prefer Access, since you can have a lot more flexibility when people start to transfer to other departments, departments grow, shrink, emerge and disappear, etc. You won’t have to “rearrange” anything, just change the reference table information. But if you’re not familiar with a database, then Excel might be simpler.

If those are your choices, Excel. Then use Word for letters & mail merge.

MS Access works great for me. I built my own data base and it merges quite well with Word for mailouts and Excell for spreadsheeting lists.

I also see Outlook could be a good option as well. Outlook came way after my Access DB which still works for me so I have not considered other programs.

Access. I use it to organize my volunteer lists.

I hasten to add, though, if you’re considering the use of Access or some other relational database, that you actually take advantage of the “relational” features of the product.

That is, read a little bit about “normalizing” data before you design separate tables for:

Employee
Department and maybe
Location and
Company

and then link those together.

If you just make a big ol’ table for “All of the data” (similar to what a single-worksheet spreadsheet would be in Excel), then you’re wasting your time and a lot of program functionality.

This type of application is an excellent way to start to become familiar with the power of a relational database… and become a hugely more valuable employee.

Thanks for the responses so far.

Would Excel be a good idea if I wanted a contact list to send out to other employees to use for quick reference? I am not proficient with Excel—so excuse my ignorance—but is there a way to change the vertical length of the columns? To make easier reading… I know it’s possible to change width..

@workaholic You type in as many lines as you need, you can adjust row height (auto or by hand) to make the spacing work for you as to length.

Outlook Business Contact Manager

@workaholic Yes, both can be adjusted.

I would say Excel. Although Access would have the best results, databases are a bit tricky and take some time to get used to. Relationships between tables etc. Though if you have time to learn then I’d go for it.