Excel is not the way to do this. Anything over ten custodians with a few data sources will quickly bog you down in the quagmire of data-entry confusion. You need to use a relational database. Something with lookups, hyperlinks to associated data, formatted reports, established queries, user data entry forms, etc. You may say that most users do not have the expertise to create an Access database to handle these functions. Well, if you are going to use Excel, you might as well use Word, or Notepad, or a Note Pad for that matter.

One item missing from the reporting here is individual media identification characteristics. For example, Guy has what looks like about 13 flash drives. These should be logged individually right? And users should be able to drill into the exception count to determine the source of the exceptions. So, when the client say, “100 exception files, where did those come from?” we should be able to use these logs and the reports to identify the source. Especially if it turns out that all of the exceptions are from one piece of media. You need to be able to interact with this data, quickly calculate and recalculate, aggregate and separate. If you cannot do that, well, see the note pad recommendation above.

Look, you might say that Execl is better than nothing. Well, not really if all you do is build a system which frustrates users and purports to accomplish something that it does not; something that you deliver to clients early in a matter but which fails when the matter gets to large to track or when your spreadsheet delivers bad information because there are no automated QC measures built in.

reminds me of that SNL sketch:

Narrator:
On Wall Street, Trendy investment fads have come and gone over the
years, but not at Grayson Moorhead, where we’ve always stuck to the
basic principles set forth by Arthur Grayson nearly 80 years ago.

…

- A Tradition of Security -

We will make a list of our clients and how much money each of them
has given us to invest. We will keep this list in a safe place. If
we have time we will make a copy of the list in case something happens
to the first list.