There was a thread a few months back called "Ship's Log" - I didn't contribute at the time, but now that we're having a spares thread as well, I thought I'd mention that I use Microsoft OneNote - in combination with OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) and DropBox - for my (electronic) boat documentation.
I used an Excel spreadsheet with tabs for years, and I ended up with sheets that combined batches of related info but were hard to re-organize. And full-text search across the workbook was clumsy. And syncing workbooks between devices wasn't great.
OneNote allowed me to embed the spreadsheet page (or fragment) into easier to organize pages (with tabs). It allowed me to paste in graphics and fragments from web pages (by default it also pastes the originating URL - very handy).
But the best part is, anything I enter in OneNote on any of my computers, 3 tablets, and cell phone are all (almost instantly) synced, including to a web-based version. So if I have a note for bleeding me fuel system, it's on every device. And it's super-easy to locate by searching on "bleed".
The OneDrive hosting for OneNote is what makes all this syncing possible. But I also use DropBox for much of my personal data (3rd party app support is much wider than with OneDrive), so that's where I've put my document (PDF, archived web pages, et cetera) storage.
Anyway, that's what works for me. I use Microsoft Office for business so it's "free" - not sure I'd license it just for boating though.
I used an Excel spreadsheet with tabs for years, and I ended up with sheets that combined batches of related info but were hard to re-organize. And full-text search across the workbook was clumsy. And syncing workbooks between devices wasn't great.
OneNote allowed me to embed the spreadsheet page (or fragment) into easier to organize pages (with tabs). It allowed me to paste in graphics and fragments from web pages (by default it also pastes the originating URL - very handy).
But the best part is, anything I enter in OneNote on any of my computers, 3 tablets, and cell phone are all (almost instantly) synced, including to a web-based version. So if I have a note for bleeding me fuel system, it's on every device. And it's super-easy to locate by searching on "bleed".
The OneDrive hosting for OneNote is what makes all this syncing possible. But I also use DropBox for much of my personal data (3rd party app support is much wider than with OneDrive), so that's where I've put my document (PDF, archived web pages, et cetera) storage.
Anyway, that's what works for me. I use Microsoft Office for business so it's "free" - not sure I'd license it just for boating though.
