I use google spreadsheets to track all of my plants. I wanted to be able to easily link (click) to photos of each plant on my Flickr account. Here's how I did it.
In my sheet, I use column B for the name of the plant. Here is a screenshot of the first 5 entires in my sheet (column B). Note that there are many other columns of data containing addition info such as height, bloom, description, etc.
In another column, I convert the text in Column B into web friendly text. Specifically, I convert all the spaces to %20, which is the web equivalent to space.
I use column T for this conversion. T13 looks like this: =SUBSTITUTE(B13," ","%20"). Of course, T14 looks like this: =SUBSTITUTE(B14," ","%20").
In that same row, I have an cell entry that looks like this:
=HYPERLINK("https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=50697352%40N00&sort=date-posted-desc&text="&T13,"flickr")
this is the clickable cell. If you have a flickr account, you can figure out this URL by doing a search of your photos & recording the URL.
So, when I click on this link in my spreadsheet, I search my Photos on Flickr for this plant entry. This is especially interesting if you have been taking photos of a given plant every year. For example, I have plants that I have taken photos of for several years, clicking on my sheet link, opens up a page with all of the photos (this is cool!).
When I add new plants to my sheet, it automatically fills in the search data. Of course, new plant items will usually not produce any search results for my Flickr photos:) However, I am starting to take photos of purchased potted plants, before I plant them. And, yes, I have been taking photos of tubers and roots prior to planting.
With modification, you can use any web photo site to do this. Picasa or Smugmug, for example. Also, I use this method to link to a google image search of my plant entry. Many times after I add a plant to my sheet, I manually copy the name and do a google search in another browser tab. This makes it much easier, just a click away:)
For my sheet, the google image link looks like this:
=HYPERLINK("https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1687&bih=1083&q="&T13,"g")
life is good.
