A free sample tracking template, set up in ten minutes.

Download the CSV below. It has nine columns and two example rows, opens in Excel and Google Sheets, and asks for no email. Replace the two example rows with your own samples.

This is what you get when you open it:

Read the nine columns as three questions: what is it, whose is it, and where is it. If a column does not help answer one of them, you do not need it.

Open the file, freeze the top row, add dropdowns for type and status, and set the date column to text. Do it once, before you add real samples. Each step takes about two minutes, and each one stops a mistake that is hard to fix later.

1. Open the file. In Excel, double-click it. In Google Sheets, choose File, Import, Upload. If every column lands in one column, your Excel splits files on a semicolon, which is common in parts of Europe. Use Data, From Text/CSV, and set the delimiter to Comma.
2. Freeze the top row. In Excel: View, Freeze Panes, Freeze Top Row. In Sheets: View, Freeze, 1 row. The column names then stay in view as the list grows.
3. Add dropdowns for type and status. Select the column. In Excel: Data, Data Validation, Allow: List. In Sheets: Data, Data validation, Add rule, Dropdown. For status, a good list is in freezer, thawed, shipped, used up, discarded. Agree the lists once and write them on a second tab. Free text is where typos in your status column start.
4. Set the date column to text before you type. In Excel: select the column, Format Cells, Text. In Sheets: Format, Number, Plain text. Then type dates as 2026-10-29, year first. Without this, Excel turns the entry into a real date and shows it the way your computer is set up, and a file from another country can swap the day and the month.
5. Save a working copy. Keep it as .xlsx or in Google Sheets. Keep the CSV you downloaded untouched, as the clean template for the next project.

Each column answers one question about a sample. The table says what belongs in it and the usual way it goes wrong. Most of the wrong ones are fixed by a dropdown or a rule on your second tab, not by reminders.

Use a letter, a hyphen and a counter padded to three digits: S-001, S-002, S-003. The ID carries no meaning, so it can never become wrong, and it sorts in order. The date, owner and project live in their own columns, where Excel cannot rewrite them. For other schemes and the failures each one avoids, read sample naming conventions that survive real lab life.

One owner, add a line instead of overwriting, and export every week. Labs that keep these three get years out of a spreadsheet. Labs that skip them end up with a sheet nobody trusts.

1. One owner. One named person merges changes and settles disputes. Everyone else can read the sheet and ask for a change. A sheet that everyone edits is a sheet nobody trusts.
2. Add a line, never overwrite. Write each event in notes as a new line: the date, your initials, and what happened. A line like 2026-09-09 MK thawed 1 aliquot can be searched and sorted. A cell that says thawed cannot, because it replaced the line that came before. The status column shows where a sample is now. The notes show how it got there.
3. Export every week. Save a dated copy in a shared folder, such as samples-2026-10-29.csv. A simple rule is to keep the last eight, and one for each month before that. When someone breaks the live sheet, you lose a week, not a lab. Google Sheets also keeps a version history (File, Version history), but a dated file in your own folder does not depend on anyone’s account.

Five. A next ID, a duplicate check, a review flag for old samples, counts by status and a count of samples with no owner. Each uses only functions that Excel and Google Sheets share, so you can paste them as written. We checked them on a test sheet in LibreOffice Calc, with a duplicate ID, a blank owner, and dates stored both as text and as real dates.

The cell letters below match the template: sample_id is column A, owner is D, date_created is E and status is G. Put the new columns to the right of notes.

1. The next ID. Paste this into a cell outside the table, such as M1:

="S-"&TEXT(COUNTA(A:A),"000")

It counts the filled cells in column A, header included, so it names the next free number. It works as long as you never delete a row or skip a number. For four digits, use "0000".

2. A duplicate check. Add a column headed duplicate. Paste this into J2 and fill it down:

=IF(COUNTIF(A:A,A2)>1,"DUPLICATE","")

It prints DUPLICATE on every row that shares an ID. Filter the column once a week.

3. A review flag. Add a column headed review. Paste this into K2 and fill it down:

=IF(AND(G2="in freezer",TODAY()-DATEVALUE(TEXT(E2,"yyyy-mm-dd"))>730),"REVIEW","")

It prints REVIEW when a sample has been in the freezer for more than 730 days, which is two years. Change 730 to suit your lab. It works whether the date is stored as text or as a real date.

4. Counts by status. Paste this into a cell outside the table, and change the words for each status:

=COUNTIF(G:G,"in freezer")

5. Samples with no owner. The same idea, for the column most likely to be left blank:

=COUNTIFS(A2:A1000,"<>",D2:D1000,"")

It counts rows that have an ID and no owner. If the answer is not zero, someone has a sample nobody is looking after. If your Excel is set to another language, its function names are in that language too, so translate them or paste the formula into Google Sheets.

Here is what the first three look like on a small example sheet:

An invented example, with the review flag set to 730 days. S-003 is used twice, and the first S-003 has no owner.

Four things: it turns dates and some codes into other values, it drops leading zeros, it opens some CSV files in one column, and it garbles special characters. Each has a fix, and most are already in the setup above. Knowing them saves you an afternoon.

• Dates. Type 2026-10-29 into a normal cell and Excel stores a real date, then shows it the way your computer is set up. A text column keeps exactly what you typed.
• Codes. Short codes can be read as dates or numbers. S-001 is safe because of the letter. A bare 001 becomes 1. The naming guide tells the best known case, the gene names that Excel kept turning into dates.
• CSV in one column.Excel splits a CSV with your computer’s list separator. Where that is a semicolon, a file with commas opens as one long column. Open it with Data, From Text/CSV and choose Comma.
• Special characters. This template is plain ASCII on purpose. A CSV with a micro sign opens garbled in Excel on Windows, so write units as uL, not µL.

Size is rarely the reason. Excel holds 1,048,576 rows on a sheet, and Google Sheets holds 10 million cells in a file. The real limits are people: two editors, no history, and records written from memory. If two or more of the five signs below are true, the sheet is already costing you time.

What a spreadsheet cannot give you is a history. A row shows the state now, not who changed it or when, and two people editing at once can overwrite each other. The full argument, in both directions, is in spreadsheets vs sample tracking software.

If you get there, you do not start over. We make tinysamples, so weigh this accordingly. This CSV imports into it on the Pro plan, $12 a month, and the import works on one batch at a time. The sample_id and notes columns map directly, and each other column is skipped unless you choose to create a field from it. The free plan, with unlimited samples and one user, takes hand-entered samples at $0. To see every free option and where each one stops, read free sample tracking software.