Original User: jborgion
+1 to what Matt says.
The very basic concept of geocoding is you are matching a name or an address to a geographic location. For example: If I have a POINT feature class and three of the points are named Matts House, Joes House and Scotts House respectively, and I have a TABLE of events (like Loud Party Complaints) and those records contain various location references and a few show Joes House and a few more Show Matts house, I can then match those complaints to a geographic location, and display them in the form of a map.
Addtionally, if I have a LINE feature class of streets that have address ranges on them, I can use them as the basis to geo-locate my table of events. Lets say that Loud Party Compliant table has as locations not only references to Joes House and Matts House, but actual addresses as well; for example 1234 Main St.
I can create one locator based on points and one locator based on streets and composite them together. That way, regardless of how the location field in the complaints table is populated, 1234 Main St or Joes House, I will be able to get a match.
Bottom line: The G of GIS stands for Geography. You need to have a GIS feature class to match against. Your list of addresses you wish to map can be in just about any format you want. Spreadsheets included.
Hope this helps-