Hi, I'm looking for advice on how best to manage a lot of data. Here's what my situation:

I need to create a spreadsheet to track visitor's contact info, date of visit, and what sites they're visiting. This is to track tourism information for our area.

Visitors are given a pass to fill out with the date and their contact information. On the pass is also a list of 30 tourism sites in the area and a space for up to 10 stamps to be stamped by the visited sites. If a visitor hands in a fully stamped (10 stamps) pass, they are entered in to a draw for a prize.

I have between 7,000-10,000 passes to input.

I know the very basics of excel and have so far created one big spreadsheet with a column each for Name, Address etc for the contact info, and one column for each of the 30 possible sites to visit. When entering a pass, I fill it out as required, inputting a '1' for a visit to any of the sites. This, I figured, was the easiest way to tackle this project. It allows me to easily track how many visitors visited each site, and I think I can figure out how many sites the average visitor went to.

I have about 500 entries input into the database and I'm finding it very cumbersome. For instance, I tried to sort the spreadsheet in ascending order by last name, but Excel won't complete the task.

I think there must be a better way than my 'simple' spreadsheet but don't know enough of excel to figure it out on my own. I'd likely be able to implement suggestions easily enough, so I'm asking if anyone can help with a more appropriate design. I also wonder if Access might be a better way to go.

I would appreciate any and all help on this situation, and I do hope my explanation is clear enough!