For years I've been toying with the idea of keeping phone messages and memos in an electronic database rather than in writing. Currently, I write down phone memos by hand, and I'm always flipping back through pages of information looking for phone numbers or details of a conversation I had with a client.
Does anyone use a simple, quick, and easy program to store and later retrieve this information? Writing down details and phone numbers during a discussion seems hard to beat and I'd rather not be typing, but maybe that's a thing of the past and I need to upgrade.
What do you use to record and retrieve phone information?
> Writing down details and phone numbers during a discussion seems hard to beat and I'd rather not be typing, but maybe that's a thing of the past and I need to upgrade.
I'm a reasonably fast typist, but I've found that I can't type fast enough during a phone conversation without disrupting it. I take notes by hand on a message sheet I keep on my desk. If need be, I'll later type up the information, but mostly I don't need to. When the sheet fills up, I file it with its brethren in dedicated folder just in case. I rarely have to dig through them to retrieve anything (each sheet has start and end dates noted in the upper right-hand corner), but I can if I need to.
I also avoid the phone. Most of my business communication takes place via email. I do the occasional in-person meeting, and the phone serves to make quick explanations or scheduling decisions, but email handles the bulk of it.
Thanks, Jim. The aspect of a searchable database is primarily for phone numbers. With cell phones and unlisted numbers becoming the norm, I'm always looking back at handwritten notes looking for phone numbers for people I talked to months or years ago.
I use Call Clerk (www.callclerk.com) mostly for it's caller id function, but it does keep a database of all your calls.
It might do what you want.