Using Excel to Keep Track of & Sort Your Essential Oil Inventory

As my education and experience grows, so does my collection of essential oils. I developed a simple spreadsheet to help me keep track of my EO inventory.  What I love about the spreadsheet format is that I can sort the collection by different criteria.   Most of the time, I keep them sorted alphabetically by common name.

If I’m looking to treat a specific ailment, I may want to chose an oil from a particular botanical family.  Each botanical family has common properties – for example, the citrus family (Rutaceae) all tend to be refreshing and cooling.   The Myrtaceae family (think Tea Tree) is excellent for congestion or infections.

What if I’m creating a perfume, or a room spray, and I’m not really thinking about therapeutic properties – I just want to create something that smells lovely?  Then I need to make sure my blend is balanced by including top, middle and base notes.

I also use this spreadsheet to track the size of the bottle and the date purchased.  Let’s say I go to use my Lime and it’s a little bit “off”, or dull.  I just take a look at the spreadsheet and can see at a glance, “Yup, that oil is over a year old and citruses normally don’t last much longer than that.”

Sorting Data in Excel 2007

1. Create your spreadsheet.  You don’t need any sort of expertise – I haven’t used any macros or formulas.  Just write your categories into the first row (I made the text bold so they would stand out), and fill in each column with your data.

2. Click the “Data” menu tab. 

3. Click on the “Sort” icon; It has the letters A Z on it – be sure you click the biggest icon as you want to open the Sort dialog box.

4.  In the “Sort” dialog box, be sure that “My data has headers” box is checked.

5. In the first drop-down menu, select which criteria you would like to sort your data.

6. If you would like the data to sort by a second criteria (i.e., first group alphabetically by botanical family, and then alphabetically by common name), click on “Add another level”.

7.  Click “okay”, and your data will automatically sort!