Trying to access my default journal

Hi all, I added many plants to my journal the other day and I am not able to get back in to it. It keeps taking me to step 3, but I am not able to find all the info I put in the other day. This is extremely frustrating as I spent a LOT of time doing this. If anyone can help me in how to find all the info I added, I would GREATLY appreciate it! Thanks in advance, Misty

Hi Misty,

When you thought you were adding plants, were you importing them from Plant Files, or were you adding them manually? I suspect you were adding them from PF, and in that case I have some bad news for you. There's a bug (unless it's been fixed recently) where you can't add plants from Plant Files to the "Default" journal, you have to create a new journal and then add the plants to it instead (it won't come right out and tell you that it's not adding the plants though, unless you've added plants to a different journal before and know what screens you ought to see, you'll think they've been going in until you go to look for your entries and they're not there). When you thought you were adding your plants, did you get a screen where it asked you to choose a category for them? If you didn't see that screen, then that means they're not there.

Also, if you're still seeing something about "step 3", I think you're not all the way through the setup process yet, and until you finish setting things up, you can't do much with the journal. You'll have to give a little more info about exactly what you're seeing on the screen though, it's been years since I set up my journal so I have absolutely no idea what "step 3" is anymore. Once you get through all the setup steps, the next thing to do is create a new journal so you can add things from Plant Files.

I'd highly recommend reading through the "Online Journal Getting Started" thread, it's long but there's a lot of good questions and answers in there, I know I've helped someone out with this exact same problem before (being stuck partway through journal setup) as well as the issues with importing things from Plant Files, so you'll probably get the help you need in there (might check out a few of the other shorter threads too, some people have started new threads when they had problems, others have posted their problems in the getting started thread). Definitely post back here if you're having problems, but I'm probably going to be away from the computer for some good chunks of time today so you may help yourself faster by reading that thread.

Thanks ecrane, I did send a D-mail, but, as always, you are the first here to help! This is what I keep seeing: http://davesgarden.com/tools/journal/
I did it all manually of the plants that I have outside, and it took me a LONG time to enter it. I sure wish I had known about this bug prior to all the effort I put in to doing this. I even looked through the 100 plus pages of journals to try to find mine, and I know I seen it there the other day after entering all of it, but it was NOT there this time. I think I will end up doing my own on the computer, and if anyone is interested in knowing what I have, I will just copy and paste it. Thanks for always being here to help! By the way, I did pay for a 2 month subscription so I can get in to more forums! Thanks again, Misty

Hi Misty, your link doesn't help me, it opens up my own journal. If you know how to cut and paste a screenshot you can do it that way, or else tell me what it says on the screen.

And to find your journal again, the best way is to click on the "My tools" tab and you should see a link to your journal. If you go through the list of people's journals, you won't find yours at all if you have it marked private, but even if you have it marked public, going to it that way will only let you view things the way you could view someone else's journal, you won't be able to edit or make changes or anything like that. So going in through "my tools" is definitely the way to go.

When you talk about if people are interested in knowing what you have--were you doing the journal so that you could use it for trading? If that's the case, you might try using the tradelist instead, I think it's a bit easier and simpler to set up and use than the journal is. When you go to Plant Files, all you have to do is click on the link "I have this plant" and it'll put it right on your tradelist. If you're not ready to trade it right away, you can temporarily disable it so people can't see it.

After all this headache, I don't think I will bother with the journal anymore! This is what it shows me when I open up my journal:
Step 3...
You now need to start your journal off by adding for first item. You do this by going to the category in which you want this item to be created. When you have selected your category, then click on "Add a new item".

Select the category from the list below:

* Favorites (0)
I should have known the other day when I had to keep clicking the back button to find it that I was in trouble! I should have copied and pasted all of it then. Unless one of the moderators is able to get me to it, I think it is a lost cause. :( I am attempting to write it all on paper right now and then I will add it to my list. Since I am so new to this I am not sure how it all works, but am always willing and able to learn. I always appreciate all your help! Misty

I would just go in and do what it says, make up a plant to put in that category (you can delete it later if you want to, but I think you have to add one in order to get the whole setup thing complete). Once you do that, you should be able to get into your journal normally, and you'll see links for creating new categories, new journals, all sorts of things. I'm not quite sure what is that you were wishing you'd copied and pasted or that the moderators might be able to find for you--if you're talking about all the plants that you thought you added but didn't really add, those don't exist anywhere so unfortunately it's beyond the power of the admins to find them for you.

You're really almost there though, as soon as you finish that last setup step and then create a new journal, then you can go back and add all those things in from Plant Files like you wanted to. The journal's not the easiest thing to use, but it is a really nice feature once you get the hang of it. I find it nicer than just keeping a list in Excel, but I guess it all depends on what you're trying to do.

OMG! I got back to it! Thank you so much, ecrane! I am not great with Excel myself, although I can use it. I prefer Word myself. Now that I got to it, I didn't have everything written down that I thought I had! Thanks so much! Misty