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

Importing Excel spreadsheet

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

    Importing Excel spreadsheet

    I have an Excel spreadsheet which is really a 7 field table of names, dates, etc. I need to import each spreadsheet into a master table that I have created that has the same field (column) structure as the spreadsheet. I have saved the spreadsheet in Excel version 4 to be able to imprort it into Alpha Five. When I try to import the spreadsheet I get the error message "Invalid number of fields". The number of fields in both the table and the spreadsheet are the same. Any ideas of what is wrong?

    Thanks,
    Rick Hanson

    #2
    RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

    Rick,

    Try and import to a new table and then append to your master table.

    RegardsKeith HubertAlpha Guild MemberLondon.KHDB Management Systems
    Regards
    Keith Hubert
    Alpha Guild Member
    London.
    KHDB Management Systems
    Skype = keith.hubert


    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

      Rick:

      Check the field names. The import from Excel will only take the first ten positions of the name. if the first ten are the same it can cause problems.

      I hope this helps.

      bob adler

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

        Hi Rick,

        We have a customer that sends us an excel spreadsheet, and we import it into alpha once or twice a week.

        You might try this, as it works in our case.

        After your data adjustments
        We format all the cells to text
        highlight A1
        SAVE AS DBF IV
        from there we import the dbf file into the import table.

        Here are a couple of threads to look at for ideas also:

        http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/alphaphorum/read.php3?num=7&id=572&loc=0&offset=40&sortby=lastreply&direction=desc&thread=572

        http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/alphaphorum/read.php3?num=7&id=786&loc=0&offset=0&sortby=lastreply&direction=desc&thread=786

        Regards Ed

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

          Keith--

          Thank you for your reply. I was going to try that but I can't find how to append one table to another!! I'm sure there is some easy way to do this but I couldn't find it in the help files.

          Rick

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

            Robert--

            Thank you for your reply. Do you mean there may be a problem if the first 10 characters are the same between the import table and the existing table field names or did you mean within the imported spreadsheet itself?

            Thanks,
            Rick

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

              Append Operations
              There can be only one.

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

                Ed--

                Thanks for your prompt reply. I just got the info on doing an append operation which I think is what you are doing once the spreadsheet is converted into *.dbf format. I'm going to give it a try.

                Thanks,
                Rick

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

                  Stan--

                  Thank you for finding the Append help files--I don't know why I didn't find them before when I searched the index--it was late at night?!

                  I did use the Append operation after saving the spreadsheet as a *.dbf file but I did run into a couple strange (to me anyway) problems. The transaction table (being imported) has a field name "Account_#". I tried to duplicate this field name in the master table but it didn't work. After entering "Account_#" for the first field, when I went to the second line to enter the next field name, the "Account_#" switched to "Account__" (2 underlines and no "#"! Thus, my fix was to go to the transaction table and change "Account_#" to "Account" (which was the field name I settled on for the master table after the problem above). Does that make any sense?

                  The reason I tried to match the same field names for both the master table and transaction table, is that when I go to the append table where transaction table field names are mapped to the master table field names (eg @customer2->customer_id), after mapping 3 field names, I get the error message "field is not recognized" when I go down to the next blank line to enter the next field name. Thus, I can't finish mapping all the field names. However, I discovered that if the master table and transaction table field names are the same, there is not a problem with the mapping. Does that make any sense?

                  I have worked around these quirks by changing the transaction table field names to the same as the master table but this is not very convenient when you have multiple trables to append. Am I doing something wrong?

                  Sorry I have rambled so long. Appreciate any help.

                  Rick

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

                    Rick

                    And to make sure no data is truncated before saving in dbf format I first highlight the whole spreadshhet (clicking on the box in the top left hand corner of the sheet) and then double click on the first column separator (between columns A and B) this makes sure that each column is sized to fit.

                    Regards

                    Glen Schild
                    Glen Schild



                    My Blog

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

                      Glen--

                      Thanks for your post...good idea...will incorporate that.

                      Rick

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Importing Excel spreadsheet

                        Hi Rick,

                        I should have been more specific.

                        The excel column heading names are simple in my case, all one word. And short.

                        After making the .dbf, I do an append like Robert and Stan have told you to do. I already have a table waiting in the application with the field names exact to my excel file column headings, with the correct width and mine are C.

                        From there I copy the data to another table that my reports are based on. We only use the data for print out reports and then zap the table and refill it again for the next data. This happens 2 or 3 times per week.

                        In this case when we receive the excel file by email, and make the changes, the whold process maybe takes 5 minutes for the printed reports to come out of the printer. After it was set up, it is very easy to do.

                        Hope this helps a little more

                        Ed

                        Comment

                        Working...
                        X