any tips for creating a travel spreadsheet?

I use a very thin (1/4") three ring notebook with a page per day. And if I need loose items for that day, I punch holes in an envelope and insert at that day. As travel progress, the pages are discard till I have an almost empty note book. And it is a long trip with lots of stuff I will go to a 1/2" notebook. It is also in a WP doc on my ipad.

I’m low tech, using word doc to make an itinerary, iPhone calendar to organize my time, email and web files, iPhone notes.
Several people on the forum are using Wanderlog and Tripit. Use the search feature for their reports on both. There’s a new review from Mardee that posted today. melT did a good comparison several months ago which may help you https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/trial-of-wanderlog-and-tripit-inspired-by-trip-research-post

I use spreadsheets and organize in a few ways depending upon the trip. In general, I start with one sheet for my itinerary (have a system for that). It will include date; day of the week; activities, where I saved my ticket or what is my confirmation code; lodging; and I color code lodging in the same place so I can see at a glance when I am where.

Then a sheet for activity links/websites - could be an official website or a page with information I might want to access again - or even a link with general city information (or sometimes just copied info from here). I tend to do this in the order I will visit.

I have a sheet for things left to do and a sheet for financials - what have I paid for, date, and how I paid - as well as balances remaining.

Sometimes I have a sheet for hotels/lodging I am looking at, although the final choice goes on the itinerary sheet.

Somewhere there is a great thread (maybe Pam’s?) on how people organize. Hopefully someone can find and post the link to that.

I sent you a PM

Here's the link https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/how-do-you-organize-your-trip-research

I used Google Sheets to create a spreadsheet for all of the activities on my upcoming trip. I like using Excel better, but Google Sheets was better for accessing on my phone. I created a separate tab for each place we're staying to make it easier to view. I added the Google Sheets app to my phone so I can easily view it, and I was able to download a copy to my phone and print it in case I have cell coverage problems. I was also able to share it my my travel partner so she can view and edit it.

I also have all of my important emails and tickets saved as PDF's on my phone and backed up on a flash drive that is phone compatible. My stack of paperwork was at least an inch thick when all printed out so the extra work to save PDF's of everything was worth it to me as it freed up some valuable packaging space. I just wish saving documents on phones was as easy as on computers!

Hi, I’m a retired engineering project manager, so my spreadsheet I’ve repopulated for each trip with several tabs sounds like what you’re describing. Currently I have 17 different stops, and it continues to work well. I have shared it with a few people with very positive feedback. Unfortunately, I am traveling now, so I can’t send it to you.

The main summary page has these columns: Date, Hotel name/address, Cost, Room Type, PAID or last day to cancel, Day of Week, Morning Activities, Afternoon Activities, Evening or restaurant reserved. Any purchased reserved activities or trains are color-coded in green. If I need to buy something, it’s color-coded in yellow. If it’s just ideas, that cell stays white.

If you don’t receive what you need from responses. Send me a private message, and I will send it to you later.

For my first stage of planning, I tape four pieces of paper into a large rectangular one-month calendar, and each day gets a normal size Post-It. The city is written on each day. Later, lodging is reserved and checkmarked, and ideas for activities are noted with any closure days of week noted. Reservations made get a colored check. Since it’s all Post-Its, it’s very easy to move cities or activity dates around. Or, tear up a day and begin again. I use both this calendar and Excel in the early months of planning and take the printed Excel sheets with me on the trip.

I also use TripIt when my itinerary is firm.

Despite using and loving spreadsheets for work, I can't seem to warm up to using one for travel. My husband makes a Google Sheet for every trip, with tabs for where to sleep, where to eat, activities, and a few others. Instead, I like to gather and organize my plans in a Google Doc and on our family Google Calendar that I use every day normally (somehow I can't SEE the days in a way that makes sense to me on a spreadsheet). I also take photos of guidebook pages and screenshots of stuff online. Oh, and I put flags on a Google map. At some point a month or so before the trip, I put only the really necessary items onto my husband's Google Sheet and then never look at it again.

I'm telling you all this because maybe a spreadsheet is too abstract, too non-visual, too removed from what someone is used to using for some people and you might be one of them. For other people, having information in several different places seems messy ("Gives me the heebies," is how my husband puts it.) I figure that it's all on my phone, so it is all easy to use while traveling. I think that, once I was done with the planning phase, I COULD put everything you mention on Google Calendar, if I had to stick to one place. Try Google Calendar and see what you think --- it is a step up from a paper calendar and may be more comfortable for you than going spreadsheet.

Thankfully for my style of travel, I don't have need for exhaustive planning tools.

I generally pick a pretty tight cluster of smaller cities, usually about 5, staying anywhere from 3-5 nights in each place. My only research involves hotels and regional train times. That's it for the firm details, I then wing it for the rest of the trip. Just walking the streets, looking at façades, and otherwise just hanging out in Europe.

I also use spreadsheets. The apps mentioned seem like too much work for me. I have one spreadsheet with lodging: dates, name, address, checkin and out times, cost, and when the cc will be charged. This is just for reference.

I have a second spreadsheet with our tentative itinerary by day with blocks for each town. At the beginning and end of each town I have a line for how, time, etc. we’ll arrive and leave. The tickets are printed and/or saved in the phone. I try to organize each day’s sights so we don’t have too much backtracking. On the back of the page I list the operating times of each sight and cost.
This second spreadsheet is usually more than one page.

I like printed spreadsheets because I can see our entire itinerary for each town. Sometimes we have to shuffle or cut sights and it’s easy to do. I just cross things off or pencil in the changes. It’s easy to adjust our plans when I can see my original ideas all together. We sometimes get tired sooner than expected, or it rains and we have to stay in longer than planned. I also carry the sheets with me so I can input the sights in Google maps to get our walking directions.

This idea has worked for us since we have been traveling except for the fact that it used to be typed or written lists :)

I'm telling you all this because maybe a spreadsheet is too abstract, too non-visual, too removed from what someone is used to using for some people and you might be one of them.

This is me, too. I used spreadsheets but got quickly overwhelmed. Now I use Wanderlog, a travel planner app, that I love. I recently came back from a 5 1/2 week trip to England and used it the entire time. It was wonderful. There were a few issues (some were user-related) but overall, I loved it and will continue to use it. It is very visual, which is why I love it. Here is my review of it if you want to read it. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/wanderlog-report-from-england-trip

I'm a retired IT guy who managed most of his professional tasks with Excel spreadsheets. That of course carried over to my personal life and stayed with me through retirement. I even record all of my electrical circuits on a spreadsheet and post it under the breaker box.

I designed an Excel "Travel Template" 10 years ago that I use for every trip. Each day is listed from first row to the last row with columns defining the location, hotel, activities, special notes and indication of next destination. It's really helpful for me to see the entire itinerary mapped out on one page.

I just completed the spread for our trip starting May 7.

I use spreadsheet in the early stages of planning to work out logistics of the schedule and budget. I keep columns of the distances, activity times and travel times to make sure I don't try to cram too much into one day. The times and mileage, sometimes with conditionals, flow from one row to the next.

My spreadsheet for a trip to Turkey last year looked something like this:

Day 10
Taxi to pick up rental car - 8:00 a.m. - 10 miles - 1 hour
Antalya to Aphrodisias - 9:00 a.m. -- 200 miles - 4 hours
Aphrodisas visit - 1 p.m. - 0 miles - 2 hours - 200TL entrance fee
Aphrodisas to Pamukkale - 3 p.m. - 60 miles - 1.5 hours
Arrive Pamukkale - 4:00 p.m.
Overnight in Pamukkale - - - [hotel name and rate, etc.]

Once I am comfortable with the logistics, I transfer the info to a text document.

We use Google Docs. We just send link to kids to keep track of us.

I am going to offer an alternative to the do it yourself spreadsheet. Check out the trip it app. Efficiently organized.

I've used spread sheets in the past. I'm SOLD on Tripit.com and the app. Last year we booked two months in Spain and Portugal. The first part of the trip was getting from Barcelona to St Jean Pied de Port in France, and then a different hotel each night for 200ish miles of the walk to Santiago, as well as rental cars and hired cars for skipping parts of the 500ish miles. After our walk, we spent time in Portugal, then the White Hills Towns, Sevilla, Madrid, San Sebastian, Zaragosa, and Barcelona again. We had our lodging, activities, transportation, flights and the flights of our three adult children and their beloveds to track. ALL of that info went into Tripit, which I shared via the app with all eight of us. I also included PDFs of confirmations. When we got home, I could easily compare credit card charges with the itinerary. We've used Tripit ever since, even for short weekend trips.

It's simple to use... you forward your email confirmations to your Tripit account and the app loads it all. You can export the schedule to your calendar, but the app's visual layout makes it easy to see, open, and change of needed. You don't need to be a tech head to use it...

You can use the free version easily. The pay version tracks credit cards, travel points, checks airline schedules, upgrade possibilities for your seats and more... it even gives you a guess of personal safety for the locations you book.

The ONLY downside I found is that, I had to split the info for our two month trip into two trips because I had so much data (PDFs of our confirmation) uploaded. I didn't need to upload it, but when I travel I'm a suspenders and belt guy... I just want to have everything if I need anything. To do that for our two month trip required splitting the trip...

For me Tripit is the killer app for travelers.

For just simple notes and expense recording, I use Google Keep. It's a simple note taker, works well for me. I even have my packing list for each trip in it. I put the different cities and hotel names into my calendar program.

I use spreadsheet for budgeting. Three columns: date, description, budget cost. I sometimes have a fourth column for actual cost. However, I found using Splitwise is a nice app which easily keeps track of my actual spending and helps splits the costs amongst our group.

Up to now, I use my Google Calendar to plan out my itinerary and to make notes of what I actually did.

For my next trip, I will use Wanderlog to research and plan my trip. I will still use my Google Calendar to record notes of what I actually did on the trip.

Here's a fun thing you can do in Google Sheets: a trip countdown!

Assign a cell with the following:

=DATE(YYYY,MM,DD)-TODAY()

Where:
YYYY = The year of your trip
MM = The month of your trip (can be single digit)
DD = The date of your trip (1 - 31)

So April 14 of 2025 would be:

2025,4,14

Each time you open the sheet, you'll see how many days are left until your trip.

I have a more complex template that breaks down location by days and costs in dollars or euros (USD:EUR or EUR:USD)

Have fun!

-- Mike Beebe

I agree with @travelerguy on the use of Google Keep as a convenient tool for organizing travel notes. They have a phone and desktop app so it is easy to work on either device.

I used to be all about the handwritten notes and printed calendars too, but trust me, spreadsheets are a game-changer! Last year, I went on a Euro trip and organized everything on Excel. I even added tabs for flights, trains, accommodations, and attractions. It was a lifesaver, especially when I needed to check train schedules on the fly. Oh, and speaking of trains, have you tried fahrplanauskunft db? It's super handy for planning train journeys in Europe.

thanks for all the advice!