The idea of these is to help keep names, addresses, etc consistent across people and years. The single most important thing you can do to help is to follow the spreadsheet's suggestions when you're typing:
Follow the spreadsheet's suggestions
Let's say you're adding a new person to the list, and they work for "Hongkong & Kowloon Wharf & Godown Co., Ltd.". As you can imagine, it's easy to make spelling mistakes, so we end up with several different versions of the name in the spreadsheet - not good.
Fortunately the name is already in the spreadsheet with the right spelling, and there's an easy way to re-use it. Just type a few characters, let the spreadsheet suggest the existing spelling, and accept it. Here's how that looks in Calc, the OpenOffice spreadsheet program:
Other rules for formatting names & addresses
Initials
Use letter, full stop, space. Eg
W. R. Loxley & Co.
Not
WR Loxley & Co.
Or
W.R. Loxley & Co.
Addresses - Buildings or Streets?
Type these in the 'Street no. / Bldg name' column:
Beaconsfield Arcade
Blue Buildings
Cameron Villas
Canton Villas
Queen's Gardens
And these in the 'Street' column:
Alveston Terrace
Elliott Crescent
Knutsford Terrace
Lower Mosque Terrace
Rednaxela Terrace
Remedios Terrace
Seymour Terrace
Addresses - Street or District?
"Queen's Road Central" is entered in the Street column. Please don't break it into a Street (Queen's Road) and a District (Central).