Letters about Importing CSV

That’s just the thing though—the preview shows it as ok but the import breaks it. I also tried reimporting it with just my name written over and over, plain text- quite a simple process with no special characters. It gave an error, and now in the notes field it shows:

azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim azim a5D25F in module 'OpenContacts.exe'. Read of address 00000000

It seems that there is some buffer overflow when it does the actual import, as it seems to “break” and truncate the text at the same point no matter what the text is—about 80-85 characters into the text.


That's right, around 80 characters for each field.

As I said, CSV is not solid. MS Excel can not handle your csv file well. The thing I can do is to make the error message more meaningful.

If you want to import legacy data, better to export them to XML file of Open Contacts' schema.

I am trying to import information from an Excel spreadsheet into Open Contacts. I have the Excel spreadsheet saved in CSV format. I go through the process to import it into Open Contacts. I have a template, I import the CSV file, and then when I actually try to import the data, I have a problem. I can only import data from the very first row from the Excel spreadsheet – it will not let me select any other row. When I do try to pick another line, it diverts back to the first line and tells me that I have a duplicate record, and when I tell it to skip and continue, nothing happens. I still cannot pick another row.

I think your program is great – and it would make my life so much easier if I could import from Excel.

Help! Tell me what I need to do!!

Thanks,

Ellen McWhirter

So far you have done well following the manual. However, there are some limitation of importing, comparing with other advanced database import utilities.
1. Import only all data in the CSV file. You can't pick any line, so you have better tailor your csv files first.
2. The csv data shown in the Import window is for your reference to make some temp changes. The UI is not for you to pick any line to import

Don't worry that the template is not yet perfect, you can undo the last import as long as you keep the import window open.




Tomas D. wrote:

Thank you very much the answer - I managed to define the template and
export the data into CSV file (though all the data conected with the
particular contact are just in one box...I am not quite sure if that
is the proper result) but I still encounter the problem with exporting
the data into excel file - while doing that I first open the tempalte
XML file and then when trying to save the Excel file the error warning
appears:

"default.xlt could not be found. Check the spelling of the file name,
and verify that file location is correct.
If you are trying to open the file from your list of most recently
used files on the File menu, make sure that the file has not been
renamed, moved or deleted"

I do not quite understand this message because I creating the Excel
file for data export for the first time, so there should not be any
such message.
I checked the manual but could not find any clue.

Thank you very much for your help
Regards
Tomas

2006/9/2, Support :

Tomas D. wrote:
> Dear Madam or Sir,
>
> I am very satisfied with the Open Contacts software, but I do
> experience one very serious problem. When I want to export the contact
> data into Excel (REPORTS-EXPORT TO CV/EXCEL-TO EXCEL - XML File with
> export template) at the end of this procedure I always encounter the
> Error Message saying that:
>
> Object: TactionMainMenuBar EdomParseError The system cannot locate the
> object specified. Line 0
>
> In this way I cannot export and subsequently store my contact data. I
> will be very grateful whether you could advice me in which way I could
> solve the problem.
>
> Thank you very much
> T.Danhel
>
The XML file is a template for mapping Open Contacts fields to CSV/Excel
fields you desired. After you design the template, you can export
selected contacts to CSV files. Please read the user manual for details.

Hi Tomas

Yes, creating a mapping is not an easy job. Fortunately this is one time job.

Regarding to Exporting to Excel, this is a bug. We will fix it soon. And, actually you may use Exporting to CSV, very much the same effect. Most data management programs can handle CSV.

You can export multiple sections of each contact. If you keep consistent naming convention, the exporting should be able to transferring almost all data.

As Open Contacts gives you much flexibility in organizing data, the sack back is that I can not give you a unified answer for exporting. You have to try a few times to get clues, and the learning curve is worthy. Have fun.

Dear Sirs,

I thoroughlly followed your import instructions to import a CSV file from "LotusAgenda" [or something...] but after defining the XML template and following the 3 steps, it imports NOTHING although it seems to have parsed the file, as you can see in the attached "status" screenshot. And even pressing CLOSE button does not do anything.

Importing from CSV to any other program is always a very technical issue. Apparently the mapping definition in the XML failed to impress the import engine. If you find it is still too difficult to make a proper mapping, you might consider to export the data into vCard files first, then import them.