How to use Excel to manage literature lists

Key points of this article

Each document occupies one row, and the number of columns is controlled within 8–10 columns. The PDF file is only stored in the folder, and its location is recorded in the table.
The author, year, and reading status must be in the same format, otherwise some documents will be missed in the filtering and sorting.
Set the year to an integer and keep the DOI in text format to prevent long numbers from being displayed in scientific notation.
For the scanned PDF, perform OCR first and then transcribe the title and author, which can reduce spelling errors.
Excel is suitable for list-taking and filtering, and automatic generation of citation formats and references usually requires additional processing.

Many graduate students, researchers, and report writers often have dozens or even hundreds of documents in their hands. At first they were scattered in the download folder, but after a while I couldn’t remember which one said what and which section I read. Using Excel to make a literature list is a simple and controllable way of document management: each document has one row, and the title, author, year, source, label, reading status and core conclusion each occupy one column.

This article talks about how to build this table, how to enter document information, how to keep it available for a long time, and how to deal with scanned documents, foreign language PDFs, etc. The OmniDoc functions mentioned in the article are limited to its table and PDF related capabilities. Other methods are universal and can be followed even without OmniDoc.

How to use Excel to keep a list of literature without making it messy? Conclusion in one sentence: A table records metadata and reading status. The original PDF text is still placed in the folder, and its location is indicated in the table.

your situation	Recommended practices	reason
Twenty or thirty documents, only serving one topic	A single worksheet, with the number of columns limited to 8–10	The structure is simple and filtering and sorting are sufficient.
Hundreds of documents covering multiple topics	A general table, plus a column of "topic" labels	The same article may belong to multiple topics. Using tags is less likely to make mistakes than splitting the table.
Need to automatically generate references in the paper	Excel only makes lists, and the citation format is processed separately.	Spreadsheets are not good at generating citation formats required by journals
Documents are mostly scanned or in foreign languages	Do OCR or translation first, then enter key information	Scanned copies cannot directly copy the title and author.
Collaborate with multiple people on the same list	Place it in a shared table, fix column names and set drop-down options	Avoid different ways of writing the same concept

Before you start: Confirm these points first

Think clearly about what the list serves. If writing for a review, focus on the year, topic, and core conclusions; if writing for a long-term knowledge base, reading status and notes are also required. The purpose determines the number of columns and granularity. If there are too many columns, no one will want to fill them in.
Determine a unified format. Once the author's writing method (such as "last name, first name" or full name), year (four digits), and journal name (full name or abbreviation) are determined, do not change it midway. There are three ways of writing by the same person, and some records will be missed when sorting and filtering by author.
Agree on the storage method of PDF. You can name the file by number, such as "012_title abbreviation.pdf". The number in the table corresponds to the file name. After moving the folder, all relative paths will not become invalid.
The information should be copied from the first page of the paper as much as possible. For the title, author, and DOI, please refer to the original homepage or journal page. Do not rely solely on the file name. File names are often rewritten by download tools, and it is easy to make mistakes when using them as questions.
Machine translated content must be marked. If foreign language questions need to be translated into Chinese, it is recommended to set up a separate column for "Translation" and check it before using it. The results of both machine translation and OCR need to be checked back to the original text, especially important terms and numbers.

Steps to create a literature list table in Excel

Create a new workbook. First create a worksheet and name it "General Sheet". Write the column names on the first line: number, title, author, year, source, DOI, subject, reading status, core conclusion, PDF location.
Freeze the first row so that the table header is always visible when scrolling down, and you will not see the wrong column after dozens of rows.
Add filters to the entire table to view by year, topic or reading status.
Set a drop-down option for the "Reading Status" column, allowing only unread, currently reading, read, and cited to avoid inconsistent statements such as "didn't read" and "read" when input casually.
Limit the "Year" column to integers, and set the "DOI" column to text format. There are many numbers and symbols in DOI. If processed numerically, errors may occur in display and copying.
Each entry is assigned a number. The number increases from 1. Do not reuse deleted numbers. The PDF file name will continue to use the same number.
When you need to group by topic, give priority to using the "topic" column to filter, rather than copying many worksheets; when you really need to divide the tables, let the sub-tables reference the corresponding rows of the master table.
Save to .xlsx format and back up regularly to another location. Tables and PDFs are stored separately, so if either is lost the other can still be recovered.

If the documents in the list are PDFs, the PDF editor in the OmniDoc desktop client can help with two things. The first is to perform OCR on the scanned PDF, so that the title, author, and abstract can be selected and copied, thereby reducing manual transcription errors. The second is to export the table in the PDF to an Excel file, so that the original data can be directly put into your own analysis table. If you need to keep two columns of foreign language titles and Chinese translations in the list, you can also upload the Excel file to omnidoc.top for translation, select translation only or bilingual comparison and download, and then check the translation.

Check each item after completion

Check items	How to see	What to do if there is a problem
The numbers are consecutive and there is no duplication.	Sort by number and visually check for skipped numbers and duplications	Repeated merging, skipped number additions, and simultaneous file name changes
Author and year formats unified	Sort by author column to see if the same person has written in multiple ways	Use search and replace to unify it into one writing method
PDF location can be opened	Randomly check a few lines and click on the corresponding file	If the file has been moved, re-specify the path.
The title is consistent with the original homepage	Check items one by one against the homepage	Modify based on the home page, and punctuation and capitalization must also be consistent.
Translation and OCR results are accurate	Compare the original text point by point	Important terms and numbers should be returned to the original text for confirmation, and if there are any questions, mark "to be verified"

📊 Core comparison: Excel list vs. other recording methods

Recording method	Suitable situation	Main shortcomings
Folder plus file name	There are very few documents, and I only look for them occasionally.	Unable to filter by subject, year or reading status, hard to find when file names are inconsistent
Excel literature list	If you want to control the fields yourself, you need flexible filtering and statistics.	It needs to be entered manually, and the citation format usually needs to be generated separately.
Specialized document management software	There are many documents and it is often necessary to insert references.	The learning cost is high and data migration requires extra attention.

The three are not mutually exclusive. Many people use Excel to record lists and reading status, use folders to store original texts, and then let other tools handle citations when writing.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Can Excel automatically generate reference formats?

Generally, the complete format cannot be generated directly according to the requirements of the journal. A safer approach is that Excel is only responsible for listing and filtering, and when writing, use special tools or manually organize according to journal templates.

2. I cannot copy the questions from the scanned PDF, what should I do?

First perform OCR on the file so that the text can be selected, and then copy the title, author and DOI from the recognition results. After identification, be sure to check it against the original home page, especially the author's name and number.

3. What should you pay attention to when choosing a free Excel literature template?

Check the file size and line limit, whether it is watermarked, whether you need to log in, and whether the format is retained after exporting. If the columns in the template do not meet your needs, it is usually easier to build them directly in a blank table according to the previous structure.

4. What should I do if the list is getting longer and the form is slow or difficult to find?

It can be split into several tables by year or major topic. The total table only retains the number, title, author, year and PDF location. Detailed reading notes are placed in corresponding sub-tables and related by numbers, which is lightweight and less likely to lose information.

📝 Summary

The key to using Excel to manage the document management list is to first determine the column names and unified format, and then store the PDF original text and the table separately and use numbers to correspond. After entering, check it according to the checklist in this article, and the list will be usable for a long time.

Open OmniDoc and work with your spreadsheet file