create table from scanner doc

[Schulzie]

Hi Phorum,

I have potential client that wants to copy a mailing list from a catalogue and be able to create mailing labels from the list. The list looks something like this:

John Doe
123 Americana
Orlando, Fl 55555

Natalie Nicelegs
000 Mygosh
Somewhere, Universe

And so on for 12,000 names and addys. Can I scan this into some format where it could be imported into a table with 3 fields so he can print form letters and mail labels?

Thank you for reading,
efs

[Jesse]

RE: create table from scanner doc

I have an Idea that just might work.
Scan your files into a plain txt file. Not a word doc or an excell file.
Then make sure it has a repeating format like:


Name
Street
City, State, Zip

....

You can open that file using Xbasic and read each line individualy into the table you have made. Look in the X basic manual under working with files.
I don't know the exact syntax, but it would look someting like this:

dim Line[3] as C
Open Address file
open receiving database
line[1] = Address file.Readln()
Count = 1
while not address file.EOF
if line[count] blank
start new record
receiving database.name = line[1]
receiving database.street = line[2]
receiving database.CityStateZip = line[3]
End new record
count = 1
End if
Line[Count] = address file.readln()
Count = Count + 1
End While
End program

I know that this is a rough sketch of a program but all the commands are in the
Xbasic book. I think you could write and debug this script in 1 hour or so, and it sure is a lot less typing.


Good Luck

Jesse

[Jesse]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Opps debugging my idea already

The array line need to be
Dim line[4] as c

[Schulzie]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Wow Jesse, that just might work, it has a lot of merit. I think i am about to learn Xbasic.

Thank you,
efs

[whanigsberg]

RE: create table from scanner doc

What Jesse is doing is interesting. Here is another approach. Scan the file so you have it as text. Take it into a work processor and replace the line breaks with commas. The result should have something like:

Name,Street,City, State,Zip
Name,Street,City, State,Zip
etc.

Save this as text.

A5 could then import the text file with ease.

Bill

[whanigsberg]

RE: create table from scanner doc

*word* processor

[Schulzie]

RE: create table from scanner doc

The only problem with this William, is that there are 12,000 names and addys, that's a lot of commas to insert

efs

[whanigsberg]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Ed,

*You* shouldn't replace them. NOBODY should (no human, anyway). Use the search and replace feature in Word or WP to replace all of the carriage returns with commas.

You would have to figure out how to insert a record separator. Since there is an extra line between records, the replace operation would insert 2 commas. So you could do a second search and replace: replace ",," with a carriage return.

Try it as an experiment one time. Word processors are pretty powerfull. I wouldn't be surprised if you required less than five minutes to do the job.

Bill

[infomatic]

RE: create table from scanner doc

I have done it Bill's way with something like 23,000 names then compared it with the post office and result was something like 17,000 but it was very bad copy so I lost a lot just in the fuzzy names. It takes a couple of hours.

good Luck
MP

[whanigsberg]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Michael,

Thanks for the info. I have to admit that almost everything I hope will require 5 minutes takes a couple of hours.

I did have a similar task to Ed's which on which I used this method but I have to admit there were only 900 names and the structure was very regular so there were no exceptions.

Of course the exceptions would bedevil any method, Jesse's included.

Bill

[JohnZaleski]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Another potential solution is to use a picec of software called "Monarch". It allows the user to visually map out fields from any text file. I have found it very useful over the years to extract data from reports printed to text files.
John

[Schulzie]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Thank you John, that is interesting.
efs

[Schulzie]

RE: create table from scanner doc

I tried this in Word changing "carriage return", "line return", "LR",
"CR", or "hard return" to a comma, but it did not make any replacements. What does Word call a "carriage return" because it did not find any of the forementioned?

efs

[Schulzie]

RE: create table from scanner doc

hello Jesse,

I am not an Xbasic programmer, but I have learned enough to see where this is going. It looks to me that this is close to pseudo code in some areas. I would be very grateful if you could help me with the actual code. In this case, the fields in my table are the same as you suggested, the file I will import is fitz_1.txt and is in columnar form:

Name
street
citystatezip

The table name is labels.dbf and it resides in c:program filesa5v4fitz.

Thank you in avance for any help you have to offer,

efs

[Allen Klimeck]

RE: create table from scanner doc

Ed
I didn't know if you were able to do your import or not the attached file is a little database to import a multi line text file. It expects the data to be in the form of the texttest.txt file. Extract the file to C:\A5data\import this way the import script will find the text file and the maillist.dbf