Excel 2007 : Need to Easily Carry Over Notes from Month to Month

I hope this is a clear description of what I’m trying to accomplish… I know I'm not really using Excel for it's most effective purpose but I've inherited its use and this method from a long line of frustrated cubicle jockeys.

I am not calculating anything, no formulas, we are just using Excel to maintain a list, basically.

I am assigned to a project for work in which we get monthly reports that are imported into Excel from text. The reports contain a list of clients and account numbers with mailing error codes. If the error code has not been taken care of in the previous month, the same client, same account number and same error code shows up on the new report as well. These in addition to all the new error codes from the past month.

Each month, when the list is worked, we make notes in the spreadsheet that need to be carried over to the next, current month.

Right now I am taking the report from both months, copying them into a single spreadsheet, sorting them by account number, looking for duplicate account numbers, manually copying each of the notes from the previous month to the current month (this can be dozens and dozens and dozens of notes), sorting the previous month out, then deleting the previous month records. The end result is a current month list of all the clients with outstanding error codes with all the notes made from previous months.

In some cases we are bring forward notes that have been in there for years.

My question is, of course, is there an easier way to do this? I need all those notes brought forward but the copy and paste step is tedious and time consuming. I am missing something obvious?Should we be using another program entirely to accomplish this??