Back in Microsoft Build 2020, the Windows maker officially announced the Lists app for Microsoft 365 subscribers. After a couple of years, Microsoft released Lists Preview for everyone. Apart from small businesses and startups, the software giant also wants to target consumers with the Lists app. If you have been on the fence about integrating Microsoft Lists into your workflow, check our top reasons to use the company’s smart database tool on your laptop.

What is Microsoft Lists?

Microsoft Lists is a database tool to empower individuals, professionals, and small teams. You can create lists, manage content, and track relevant information in a structured format. Unlike those cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, you can create custom columns, tweak data type to text, number, date etc., and use different views to manage your lists like a pro.

Basically, Microsoft Lists offers advanced tables to organize tasks and data in a digital canvas. Microsoft Lists is available in Preview, and it’s completely free to download and use on the web, iPhone, and Android. You only need a Microsoft account to get started.

7 Expense tracker

Do you still use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to manage your expenses and assets? You can ditch these solutions and create an expense/asset tracker list right into Microsoft Lists. You can either use one of the built-in templates or create a custom list from scratch.

You can add columns like items, date, amount, category, description, receipt, and more. Make sure to change the column type to the relevant property. For example, you can expand the Amount column and select Sum under the Totals menu. That way, you can calculate your expenses and assets at the bottom.

Similarly, you can open the Category column and create relevant expense categories like Household, Health, Hobby, Personal, Rent, Food, and more. You can even set a default category for your expenses. You need to spend some time with Lists to create ideal columns and tweak them based on your preferences. After that, it’s a breeze to manage your finances in an efficient manner.

6 Content calendar

Whether you run a small website, a YouTube channel, or social media accounts for a large business, you can use Microsoft Lists to plan your content publishing schedule like a pro. In the screenshot above, we created a custom list for a sports website and planned out the blog posts.

You can add a content title and post description, assign an author, track its status, enter a due date, record the publishing date, tag by content type, and more. Once you create a content calendar, you can also invite your team members to collaborate on lists.

5 Event itinerary

If you are a wedding planner or an event manager, use Microsoft Lists to keep track of all events like a pro. You can insert columns like session name, speakers (if necessary), session types (Meal, Workshop, Keynote, and more), description, start and end dates, duration, capacity, and more.

4 Human resource management

Microsoft Lists can be an excellent HR tool, too. You can enter the employee's name, position within the company, application dates, interview details, notes, LinkedIn profiles, emails, and other relevant details. You can even upload an attachment to a list item, such as a resume or offer letter.

3 Vacation planning

Are you planning a summer vacation with your college friends? Instead of using note-taking apps like OneNote or Evernote, opt for Microsoft Lists to track every detail of your trip like a pro. You can create different columns such as places to visit, travel dates, airline information, budget, hotel details, and more. Lists even support a Yes/No column, which you can use to track if a specific hotel has confirmed your booking, or whether your friends agree on a certain planning item.

2 Project management

While Microsoft Lists doesn’t aim to rival dedicated project management tools like Trello and Asana, you can use it to manage small projects with your team members or employees efficiently. You can create columns like Tasks, Descriptions, Category, Progress (Not started, In progress, Due, Done), Priority, due date, and notes, and assign them to relevant team members.

Since Microsoft Lists is powered by OneDrive, you can set passwords and expiry dates for your shared lists.

1 Holiday gift ideas

Microsoft Lists is an ideal tool for creating a database of your Christmas gifts for family members and co-workers. You can enter gift items, price, recipient, occasion, purchase link, and a final column displaying their purchase status.

From chaos to clarity

These are just some of the popular use cases for Microsoft Lists. You can use it for home and auto maintenance, job and college applications, book lists, wine or art collections, and more. The possibilities are endless here.

Microsoft Lists can be an excellent alternative to other popular database tools like Airtable, monday.com, ClickUp, Coda, and others. It’s user-friendly, works well within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, and does the job effectively. These are some of the reasons why Microsoft Lists is a part of my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system.