Long time member but haven't posted in a while

Thanks, is there a place I can go where people have some templates posted or a way to search for them?

This is my suggestion:
I used excel as CRM. It was a nightmare to say is understatement. It will be disaster-in -waiting if you are going to share it with other users.
In simplest term, CRM is a database. Excel is not designed for storage, particularity strings. The last time I used MS Access was 15 years, so hardly remember anything, but database is the best tool for CRM. Mind you unlikely to use it for calculation and data manipulation.
I think there are some freebies CRM on- line.
I used ZOHO which you can easily integrate it with excel. It was cheap, $3 per month.
But if you really really want excel as CRM, I would use "Tables" in excel.

Hi AB33, oddly enough I am just getting your message & we have been using ZOHO for a few months now.

Its been a helpful tool for centralizing our data.

When you say integrate excel with zoho, can you give an example of what that accomplishes or what it does?

Hi Excelstone,
Glad to know you are not using excel as CRM. I used ZOHO over 3 years ago, so my memory of the product is fading.
I think you can built-in user defined functions in ZOHO (Formula)
If you link ZOHO to excel, all your data are stored in ZOHO, but you can import the data in to excel and use Excel's native functions to analyse and manipulate the data. It is similar to Excel's function of data import from external source.
I think you can also request the API from ZOHO and if you have some IT people who can easily integrate it with excel, but I am not sure if ZOHO are willing to give the API.