How to import parts of folder names into an existing form?

[MiB]

Hi,
I am using this wonderful software since … erm … a very long time. But I have always added content by hand.
Now I want to add several thousand entries to an already existing form.

This is what I’ve got:
thousands of Directories named:
aaaa [bbbb]
where aaaa and bbbb is a variable string with and without blanks.

A Database with a form which has two text fields. (And much more, but this is not relevant for this task.)

This is what I want to achieve:

every single “aaaa” should go to the first field and “bbbb” to the second field (without the [ ]) of a new entry in the existing form which has already hundreds of entries.

Is this possible? Perhaps by csv-file? (I know how to generate a csv-file with “aaaa” in one column and “bbbb” in another.)
How can I do this?

Have a nice day – whoever reads this. ^_^

[Brendan]

Hi MiB,

Tap Forms can certainly import your CSV file. You do need to use one of the standard delimiters between your values though. Tap Forms can handle commas, semi-colons, tabs, and pipe | characters.

So as long as your data is delimited like that, Tap Forms can import it.

So it would need to be:

aaaaa ; bbbbb

Or with one of the other supported delimiters.

Sometimes it can be easier to import into Excel or Numbers first, massage the data there, then import it into Tap Forms.

[MiB]

Hi Brendan,
thank you very much for your quick reply.
Nice to hear that. I will try this tomorrow. (I’m from Germany. It is too late already.)

[MiB]

Works great!
Only issue: The pictures of the imported data stay small in the overview at the side. (See screenshot 1)
Also there seems to be an issue with the caching of the pictures. After changing the view into gridview and back, the pictures are completely shuffled and don’t match the actual pictures anymore. (See screenshot 2)

Attachments:

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[MiB]

And another issue:
The imported data is also totally random.
In the text file, the order was (alphabetically):
1
2
3
4
5

In Tap Forms the order is now:
5
3
4
2
1

How can this be fixed?

[Sam Moffatt]

In your form settings (form button on the top right, form tab of the right hand panel) you can set your “First Sort Field”. If you’re importing from CSV and none of those fields map to what you’re wanting to sort by then create an extra field in the CSV when importing for “order” and then use that to sort by. You can also make that field an auto-increment field later so that new fields get larger numbers.

Can’t help on the picture size, I think it’ll fix itself eventually once the metadata resyncs.

[MiB]

Hey Sam,
great solution. I’ve inserted a number field, added numbers in the csv-file and sorted by the number. – Works!

But I’ve also found something else: It wasn’t Tap Forms fault:
I am working on a mac. And if you select directories in the finder, hit [CMD] + [C] and paste the names in a blank text-file, the order will be different, depending on how you’ve selected the files:
– select with [CMD] + [A] = correct order as listed in the finder
– select by mouse rectangle starting on the top = correct order as listed in the finder
– select by mouse rectangle starting on the bottom = opposite order as listed in the finder
– select single directories, not from first to last, but in a different order, by clicking and holding [CMD] = strange order which has nothing to do with the order you’ve clicked, nor with any other visible order.
If you click from the beginning, everything is fine. Even if you skip some directories.

I did use clicking with [CMD]. This ruined the order completely.

(Tested with mac-os Mojave)

The pictures stay that way whatever I do. Haven’t exported and imported though.

[Sam Moffatt]

Good to hear the tip worked.

On the thumbnails, at least one of them have fixed themselves, I remember something odd like that ages ago, maybe editing the record will trigger an update, not sure. I’ll defer to a high power on that one ;)

[Author]

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