Importing from Bento – no records present

[Christine Murdoch]

I have just started using Tap Forms and have quite a strange issue. I can import templates complete with records from Bento, providing the original library was not in a folder or does not contain a collection. I have tried moving the libraries out of folders and restarting Bento, but that still does not help. Tap Forms does import the template, but not the records which is what I really need.
Any help would be appreciated. Many thanks.

[Christine Murdoch]

I can work round this by exporting a cdv file from Bento and importing that into Tap Forms.

[Brendan]

Hi Christine,

You will need Bento version 4.1.2 in order to export the records along with your template.

There’s a link to the Bento 4.1.2 download in the online user manual.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Christine Murdoch]

Hi Brendan,
I am using 4.1.2 – some seem to work and others (especially libraries which were in folders) don’t.
Christine

[Brendan]

Hi Christine,

Hmm… If you’d like to send me a sample I can take a look at it for you.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Christine Murdoch]

Dear Brendan,
I have taken a screen shot of Bento before I tried to import to Tap Forms. I was able to import the libraries “St Modan’s Roll”, “Craigrownie Roll” & “Garelochhead Roll”. None of the other libraries imported the records along with the library. In other words I had the library with no records. I don’t have a screen shot of those as I deleted them, exported the Bento libraries as CVS files and then imported to Tap Forms.
Thanks

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[Brendan]

Hi Christine,

Well that’s very strange because I know that Tap Forms can import libraries that reference other libraries. Although I’m not sure about importing libraries that are represented by a folder. For example, you have a folder called Music. But you also have a library under it called Music List. If you just export Music List as a template, I would think that should import properly.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Christine Murdoch]

Hi Brendan,
I tried importing Music List as a template, but none of the records were imported to it. I tried removing Music List from the folder and then importing and that didn’t work either.
As I say I have been able to work round it.
Thanks
Christine

[George Middleton]

I’m having a similar issue using Tap Forms 5 where no records are imported from a Bento 4.1.2 .bentoTemplate file.
As shown in the attached screenshot, the import completes “successfully” but also returns an error message. After the import, the “Pick Lists” sheet does show 5 of the approximately 20 different “choice” type fields in my Bento db with their corresponding values, but that’s about all I see that was imported… No actual records at all. Any thoughts on what to try to achieve a successful import?

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[Brendan]

Sounds like a problem with the embedded Template.xml file that’s inside the .bentoTemplate file. I would need to take a look at it to see exactly what the problem is. Probably just an invalid character at that location described by the error message.

[George Middleton]

I could put the file in Dropbox for you to take a look at; it’s 39MB.
If so, what email should I send invite too?
Thank you!

[Brendan]

Just use my support account. support@tapforms.com

[George Middleton]

Thanks Brendan, file is in DB.

[Brendan]

I corrected the Template.xml file embedded within the .bentoTemplate file. Had to remove a bunch of invalid characters. It imported fine after that.

[George Middleton]

Thank you so much Brendan for the rapid support response!

All is fixed and I’m up and running, learning how to edit my layout as we speak.
Who would have thought the export file from Bento would have contained invalid characters?!

[Brendan]

Ya, I’ve seen it quite often actually. I think it happens on input, possibly from copying and pasting the values from some external source. But then when the Template.xml file is exported, they’re not stripping out invalid characters. So anything that reads it during import causes the import to fail on those characters.

[Cedric Van Tenten]

hi,

I have the same issue here. My library is not complicated, I don’t have related libraries or something.
Just a simple comic book lib and a DVD lib. I can try to export an excel and import it to Tap Forms 5 Mac but then I don’t have the images of the covers.

Thanks in advance for your help!
kind regards
Cedric

[Brendan]

Hi Cedric,

Would you like to email me your Bento template and I can try and import it to find out what is causing your trouble?

Thanks,

Brendan

[Charles Kouns]

I am having a similar issue… I export one of my libraries from Bento onto my desktop (i clicked the include all records). I go into TapForms and open the form that I want to import the file into. I have set this form up with exactly the same fields. Upon completing the import, which it says it has done, nothing shows up in the file nor can I find it anywhere else.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

Charlie

[Brendan]

You don’t have to create a form to import into. You only need a document. So setting up the fields the same as in Bento is not required.

Check to see if the form is hiding inside the Uncategorized category or another category. Click the button to the right of the category name to expand it. You should see them there.

[Charles Kouns]

Brendan — thanks — there it was. I somehow got from what I was reading is the help stuff that you should create the form first. Now I know what to do.

Many thanks for the amazing response.

[Author]

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