Keptrow

How to Organize Business Cards in Excel After a Trade Show

By Keptrow · · 5 min read

You're back from the show with 80 business cards, a few with notes on the back, some stapled to a lead form. If they go in a drawer, most of them will never hear from you again.

A spreadsheet is still the simplest place to put them. It's searchable, you can sort it, and you can move it into any CRM later. Here's how to get the whole stack into one clean sheet in an evening, starting with the cards that matter most.

Step 1: Sort the stack before you type anything

Don't type in the order the cards come out of your bag. Make three piles first:

  • A: a clear project, a quantity or a date
  • B: real interest, no timeline yet
  • C: everyone else

If you graded leads at the booth (see our trade show lead form), the grade is already on the card. If not, it takes a few seconds per card while you still remember the conversation.

Type the A pile first. If you run out of time tonight, the cards still waiting are the ones that can wait.

Step 2: One row per person, one sheet for everything

Use one sheet for every card from every show, not one file per event. Add a column for the show name and date instead. Then "everyone from the Frankfurt show" or "everyone who asked about samples" is a filter, not a search through five files.

Keep it to the columns you'll actually use when you follow up. Name, company, country, email, phone, what they were interested in, a one-line note about the conversation, and the date you met. Our trade show follow-up plan explains each one.

Two columns people forget:

  • Source: the show, plus the booth or hall if you exhibited at more than one stand
  • Card photo: a file name or link to a photo of the card (more on this below)

Step 3: Type it so it stays clean

Most messy contact sheets go wrong in the same few places. Set these rules before you start:

  • Phone numbers as text, with the country code. Write +49 151 2345 6789, not 0151…. Format the column as Text first, or the spreadsheet may drop the leading + or 0, or turn a long number into scientific notation.
  • One phone per cell. If they gave a WhatsApp number separately, give it its own column.
  • Country in full, spelled one way. "Germany", not "DE" in one row and "Deutschland" in the next, so the filter works.
  • Names as printed on the card. Don't guess which part is the family name. Put the full name in one column if you're unsure.
  • Notes from the back of the card go in the note column, word for word. "Wants 4 designs, price list Monday" is worth more than the job title.
  • Dates as dates. Use one format for the whole column, for example 2026-10-17, so you can sort by it.

Turn the range into a filterable table (in most spreadsheet apps that's a filter button in the toolbar), and freeze the header row.

Step 4: Keep a photo of every card

Before you file or throw away the paper, take a photo of each card, front and back. Name the photos so you can find them, for example 2026-10-frankfurt-A-mueller.jpg, and put the file name in the Card photo column.

It takes a minute per ten cards. It saves you when you can't read your own typing, a logo matters, or the buyer writes back three months later.

Step 5: Remove duplicates

You'll meet some people twice: once at the booth, once at dinner, or at two shows a year. Sort by email and look for repeats. Keep one row, merge the notes, and keep the most recent date. Don't delete blind. Two people at the same company can share a generic email address.

Step 6: Decide who you contact first

Once the sheet is in, sort by grade, then by date met. Your A leads from the last few days are tomorrow morning's list.

Add one more column, Next follow-up, and fill it in as you go. Without it, the sheet is an address book. With it, you can see who is due each day. Our trade show follow-up plan has a simple Day 1–90 schedule for each grade.

Typing or scanning?

Typing by hand Scanning app or OCR
Good for Up to a few dozen cards, notes on the back Large stacks, clean printed cards
Watch out for Typos in emails: check every one Mis-read names and numbers, missing handwritten notes
Time A few minutes per card, less once you get going Faster, but you still check every row

Scanning saves typing. It doesn't grade the lead or copy your handwritten note, and those two fields are what make the follow-up work. Whichever you use, check each email address against the photo of the card. One wrong letter and your follow-up goes nowhere.

Want the sheet already set up? The free Lead Follow-Up Tracker has one row per card, A/B/C grades and a next follow-up date that it works out for you. The free version covers 5 leads with the Day 1 and Day 7 steps. It works in Google Sheets and LibreOffice, built for Excel with standard formulas only.

FAQ

What is the best way to organize business cards electronically?

Put every card into one spreadsheet, one row per person, with a column for where you met them and a short note about the conversation. Keep a photo of each card. You can sort, filter and later import the sheet into a CRM.

Should I keep the paper business cards?

Keep them until the photo and the row are both done and checked. After that, many people keep only the A and B cards from each show.

How do I stop phone numbers from breaking in the spreadsheet?

Format the column as text before typing, and always include the country code with a plus sign.

One file per trade show, or one for all of them?

One file, with a Source column for the show. Filtering is easier than searching across files.

Can I import the sheet into a CRM later?

Usually, yes. Most CRMs import a CSV file. Keep one person per row and one value per cell, and the import will be much easier.

Free tools from Keptrow

Questions? Email keptrow@proton.me.