That would be great. The answer to your question depends on the information they provide. If they provide only a plant name then a text file with a single name per line is fine. The problem with just providing a plant name is the issue of matching to the proper HMF plant listing when that name is shared by more then one plant. A surprisingly common scenario.

When they provide additional information like class, breeder or year bred, we need a format which allows us to readily distinguish between information supplied (name, class, breeder,etc.). This is best done with a "formatted" file of some sort.

An Excel file with the information in columns works very well. An Access database file would be fine too.

Best of all, both Excel and Access provide for "exporting" data to industry standard format called "CSV" (comma separated values) which can be directly uploaded to an HMF listing using their plant name list upload feature. HMF's very sophisticated processing reads a CSV file and presents a form with all the plant matches found as well as those matching multiple HMF entries allowing one to select the proper match. The whole process is so fast and efficient it allows one to update a listing with thousands of names in just a few minutes.