Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

CSV and Excel Import

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    CSV and Excel Import

    I know this should be real simple. Getting an error when importing a tab delimited file into a database. It looks fine until I click the box to use first row for field names and then all the field delimeters bunch up in the wrong place and I get a A5 forced shutdown. Is it something simple I am missing? I'm attaching a small sample of tab delimited text file. Thanks,
    Bill

    #2
    RE: CSV and Excel Import

    Bill

    Why not try a csv instead of tab delimited? Or have excel export a dbf file.

    What is the source and what choices do you have?
    Al Buchholz
    Bookwood Systems, LTD
    Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

    Occam's Razor - KISS
    Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
    Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
    When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
    "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
    Albert Einstein

    http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

    Comment


      #3
      RE: CSV and Excel Import

      I see the "bunching" you describe but it imports correctly if you uncheck the "field names" setting. Don't know why.

      At this point you can edit the structure of the import table, rename the fields, change the import to import into an existing table, and all should be well...
      There can be only one.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: CSV and Excel Import

        Al,
        Thanks for the reply. I have numerous choices, I can take data in an ascii format or from excel - I tried the DBF export from Excel and that doesn't seem to give me any records. My favorite choice would be to create a text file and read it right into A5.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: CSV and Excel Import

          Hello Bill:

          You wrote:

          [ I tried the DBF export from Excel and that doesn't seem to give me any records.]

          Can you please define "DBF export"?

          If you SAVE an Excel spreadsheet as a DBF file, you can open that dbf file directly from Alpha Five, there is "no export" procedure.

          Please note that you need an Alpha Database and you should add the aforementioned dbf file to that database.

          Robert T

          Comment


            #6
            RE: CSV and Excel Import

            Robert,
            Although I would like this option to work, I get zero records every time I try to add a dbf I saved out of Excel into a new database.
            Thank You,
            Bill

            Comment


              #7
              RE: CSV and Excel Import

              In a DBF file the fieldnames cannot contain punctuation symbols other than the hard_underscore. Some of your column headers have periods in them.

              In a DBF file the fieldnames are limited to 10 chars in width. Some of your column headers are much longer than this.

              If it were me, I'd relabel the column headers and try to create the DBF again. I can't say for certain this is what's causing your trouble, but it's what I would do (for what that's worth).

              -- tom

              Comment


                #8
                RE: CSV and Excel Import

                Al,

                How do I import an Excel CSV file into my Alpha Five database
                (Home version).

                I am new to this and am trying to build a database to track personal income and expenses. Every month I download my data from my bank into Excel csv. After scrubbing the data in Excel, I want to import it into Alpha Five.

                Thanks in advance for any help.

                Tx Mitsu

                PS - I searched help for csv, excel and or import and got nothing helpful.

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: CSV and Excel Import

                  Mitsu

                  Searching for import I found 'import operations'. That explains in great detail how to import a file.

                  One way to start an import operation is shown in the attached image.

                  The import genie will guide you. If the file has a csv extension and you don't see that as a choice for file types, type *.csv as the file name and you'll see all of the the files with the csv extension.

                  Let us know how you fare. If you have additional questions, start another topic and we'll track that.
                  Al Buchholz
                  Bookwood Systems, LTD
                  Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

                  Occam's Razor - KISS
                  Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
                  Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
                  When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
                  "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                  Albert Einstein

                  http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: CSV and Excel Import

                    Bill,

                    This is a late reply and you might have solved the problem or gone on to other challenges, however . . . make sure that the table into which you are importing the data does not have any calculated fields or the import won't work. If any of the fields are calculated fields, change them ALL to user entry, do the import and then change the fields back to calculated. You can't import into a calculated field and apparently Alpha won't import any of the data fields if there is a calculated field in the table.

                    Dave
                    Dave Jampole
                    www.customalpha.com

                    Women and cats will do whatever they want. The sooner men and dogs realize that, the happier they will be.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: CSV and Excel Import

                      I have experienced this in my own work. In my case, when I change the file to be imported from tab delimited to character delimited, it works fine (with no other changes). I hate to use the B word but it seems to be a bug. If I remember correctly, v6 does not fix the problem.

                      Ray Lyons

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: CSV and Excel Import

                        Al,

                        Operations and the Genie got the job done. Thanks.
                        I still cannot get the *.csv thing to work, but I am okay
                        for now by saving my excel file as a .txt and using the Genie.

                        PS - The picture you sent me was very helpful, how do you do that?

                        Thanks again.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: CSV and Excel Import

                          The csv should work, but there may be another problem.

                          The picture is made by capturing the screen image with the prt sc key. Pressing it puts the image into the clipboard. Then paste into paint and adjust as needed.

                          It's a cheap (free) and easy way to accomplish good communication.

                          Have a great fourth!
                          Al Buchholz
                          Bookwood Systems, LTD
                          Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

                          Occam's Razor - KISS
                          Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
                          Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
                          When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
                          "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                          Albert Einstein

                          http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

                          Comment

                          Working...
                          X