Have you ever considered what will happen if you lost your cell phone? If you are anything like I am, every one of your important contacts are stored in that little device. I'll bet that you have become so reliant on the address book in your cell phone that you no longer strive to remember people's phone numbers. How do I know this? … Because I don't memorize telephone numbers now that they are all stored in my cell phone. If you lost your cell phone, how would you recover that information?

You could try to be diligent and make sure you put each phone number into your email client address book. Using the email address book is optimal for storing complete information on your contacts but print features on many of these programs are lacking or need significant manipulation to print out a simple phone book. Furthermore, your email address book contains contacts for which you do not have phone numbers and contacts that you do not call frequently and therefore, may not be in your cell phone address book.

Creating a spreadsheet with your critical phone numbers is great idea for backing up the telephone numbers stored in cell phone numbers. It's a quick and easy method that you can use which also gives you the freedom for sorting. Several of your phone contact, may have multiple telephone numbers such as Home, Cell, and Business. With Excel, you can layout your records so that each person has one record in a single row. Be sure to type in a column title at the top of your list area. The titles should be a different format style than the data in your list, i.e., bolded with a larger font size works well.

To Setup your worksheet:

• Type "Name" in cell A2
• Type "Home" in cell B2
• Type "Work" in cell C2
• Type "Cell Phone" in cell D2

You can use cell formatting for each of the columns which hold the phone numbers as follows:

• Click on the column header to select the entire column
• Choose Format | Cells from the main menu
• Click on the Number tab and select special from the category box
• Select Phone Number from the Type box
• Click on the OK Button

Start entering your data in Cell A3. You can enter a home phone #, a business * and a cell phone # for each person in your address book. Once you have established the formatting in the phone number columns, you simply need to enter in the 10 digit phone number with no dashes or parentheses, and Excel will apply the format. This technique makes the typing process much quicker and simpler.

Like anything else that is dynamic, there is a maintenance issue with keeping this list up-to-date with new telephone numbers. So periodically, you will need to review your phone list and compare it to the numbers stored in your phone. Establishing this list can also be useful if you change services and cannot electronically transfer your phone numbers. It makes reentering your contacts into your phone a less tedious process.