Welcome to the forum.
Excel isn't a very good database, but I guess it should be sufficient for your needs because you don't have much data, you're not worried about security and you don't have plans to create sophisticated queries to analyse the data.
Yep, a good starting point would be to column headers across the first row and then you can start inputting your data. If you're feeling adventurous then you could look into using
a table in Excel.
In Excel 2007 there are a couple of ways you could use to sort your data. If you use a table then you will automatically get some filter buttons in the header row and you can use these to sort the data. Alternatively, if you want to use the Sort button on the Data tab, then just make sure you select all of your data before clicking on the button and Excel will understand that it needs to keep each row of data together. If you accidentally miss a column in your selection Excel will probably be clever enough to spot your mistake and it will ask you if you would like it to expand the selection to include the missing column.