Dear All, I too use data bases which I find much superior to spread sheets when you are searching and want to come up with a whole list of things that are alike. Like Jane I use Filemaker Pro although my husband uses Access (I enjoyed hearing someone else call it Excess.) I find it very irritating with a lot of Microsoft products that if you don't keep updating you can't communicate with people who have the same product. I am sure Access can do some of the same things that Filemaker can, but I am still irritated that it was so difficult to transfer an old flower d-base I started with into Access. I finally figured out how to do it through trial and error, but didn't write it down and then when I wanted to do another one I had to struggle again. The help screens weren't helpful and I am sure they didn't want you to be able to do it easily. If I was creating one I definitely want one where information could be shared cross platform and easily exported into something commonly used. In Filemaker you can save files in many different formats including htm table format which I have found very useful when I want to send something to friends who have a Mac and can't open Excel files or Word docs. One of the things I don't like about filemaker is that you can't highlight a lot of things and then copy them somewhere else. You have to export which is much more time consuming so I'd like to be able to highlight a whole record or a whole layout and copy it so I can quickly take it somewhere else. As for fields the important thing would be to allow the individual to create whatever they wanted. I still haven't gotten over how many fields Boyce said they had for the Chicago Botanic Gardens: "Currently the database has columns to hold 110 different fields of information for our 2.2 million plants (rows of information)." I think data bases are very personal. We all of us may have different things we want to record and that is fine. I like to include the country of origin and the habitat information as that helps me figure out how to grow it. I also like to keep track of when plants break dormancy and when they bloom. I just find it interesting to see if there is a year to year pattern. Also I don't panic if a pot is still not showing life when I know that it is late to come up. Mary Sue