Hi all, Arnold's suggestion of db topic is a good one. I imagine most of us keep track of plants and/or bulbs for some purpose whether we grow in ground or pots. Jim's reminder about sharing info with others is good. Apple users have only about 15% of the market and their programs are not intended for cross-platform sharing, like MicroSoft programs are. So if you don't care about sharing info, it won't matter which program/platform you use. I have used Excel myself for perhaps going on 20 years now. I don't use all the features because I don't need them all but I use a lot of them. As for the automatic functions Jane spoke of, you need to devote the time to learing a bit about any program you want to use. This includes looking at the drop down menus, particularly the menu marked TOOLS then OPTIONS. If you go through each tab and just read what the boxes say and notice whether or not they are checked, you can set your Excel to do what you want, and to not do what you don't want. Failing success with this, probably half of the robins here use Excel and are always happy to answer some questions privately. There must be 100 different spreadsheets I have designed with Excel that I use very frequently. And I make new ones all the time to keep track of a variety of things. I even use it to make flow charts. If you take the time to learn how to NAME cells and groups of cells, it makes generating reports and doing sorts easier. It is very flexible. If Mary Sue makes room on the WIKI for some sample plant/bulb db spreadsheets, she will let us know, and I will be happy to hang parts of two or three that I have used for plants, bulbs, and gardening in general. Cathy Craig EA your Essential Advisor