The free program Open Office has an Excel clone just go to www.openoffice.org and download.

Bill

The free program Open Office has an Excel clone just go to www.openoffice.org and download.

Bill

The free program Open Office has an Excel clone just go to www.openoffice.org and download.

Bill

I know, isn't it terrible! So many awesome new ones that I would love to get but can't afford this year. Made a list and now have to start crossing some of them off to stay in my budget, but they sure are beautiful.

Shadow

Thanks for sharing the news Mike. I had already drooled over them when Loïc (on iris photos) shared the photos and descriptions in his flickr page, but it sure was nice to download the '09 catalog and not pay $6 for it.

It's good to see you back Shadow, I hope that arm's healed well. I have to tell you about my new order process.

I've recently discovered the iris friendly attributes of an old program named Excel and I'm using it for so many different kinds of garden organization.

Now, when I make out an order, I type the variety name in column A and the price in column B. I then enter all the varieties I want, calculate the shipping, and add that in column B below the iris prices.

Then I format the cell at the bottom of column B to calculate the sum of the column. With all that set up I then go back over the list (as many times as it takes) deleting varieties. The total will always update with each deletion and I recalculate the shipping often to make sure the grand total's as accurate as possible. (I bet someone that knows how to use the program much better than this self-taught, by trial and error, Excel user could even tell you how to make it automatically update the shipping too)

This way I don't have to write out sheet after sheet by hand and I know right away once I've reached the total I can afford.

That's an awfully long explanation for something that you may already know about, but it sure is helpful for me (now that I know how to do it). What I would have done with my spare time, over several days (when you consider all the sources and catalogs), is now finished in one sitting.

I hope that's news to someone. :)

Brock

Thanks Brock! I have an Excel reader, but no Excel program. My daughter used Excel at her job when she worked at home, so I will see if she still has the program disk. That is a very good idea. Maybe I could get my various lists organized that way without having to type them over and over again.

Shadow

Orders aren't the half of it when it comes to the things I'm using Excel for now. I've used it to create a master list of the varieties I grow. Now I can sort by variety, intro, hybridizer, class, source, garden row etc.

I'm even making an inventory of my National Geographic collection. It's proving to be very useful and I don't know how I could stand to use the programs I was, but I see I'm starting to "hijack the post". I recommend looking into it. :)

Brock

Hey Brock and Shadow, are you familiar with the plantstep program? The program is less than $30 and does more than iris. I have daylilies on mine, but it is built for multiple flowers. check it out at. www.plantstep.com
Really a great-easy to use program and you can even create your own catalog with pictures! Even includes pages for buy/sell records and for hybridizing.
Weldon

Paul Black was the guest speaker today at the Reg 20 Winter Member's Meeting in Denver. He gave the judges training afterwards too.

What a delightful and friendly man and a fantastic program. His futures are incredible.

I like to keep all of my plant info on my pda so I can carry it out to the garden and to the garden center when I'm buying new perennials. I use an inexpensive program called "ListPro" from Illium Software that runs on both my main computer & my pda & keeps them in synch.

Using it, I have built separate databases for all of the plant types that I collect as well as for collecting data on my seedlings. I can sort my iris by type, hybridizer, color, height, year of intro, what I have vs what I want to buy, or any other column I put in.

It can also export/import from Excel or most other programs that can create & read a tab-delimited text file. The new version lets me attach pictures & will publish a list to webpage though I'm not using those features just yet.

I use the program for every kind of list you can think of including shopping lists, plant auction manager, to do lists, recipes, household inventory, book & movie lists...tons of other stuff too. It is nice to only have to learn a single program and it is very intuitive to use.