Importing problem

[Glen Forister]

I have a Form all configured and discovered I was working on only 38 records, whereas the total file should hold 130 records. I discovered my problem and recreated my import file to include all my records. I imported them into the database and now I have 38 duplicates because they were all just added. I understood the duplicates wouldn’t be added.

How do I correct this. I double checked all the setting for importing and didn’t see an “add” or “replace” button. Did I miss something?

[Brendan]

Hi Glen,

This is generally due to a File Encoding mismatch. The CSV file you’re importing is not the same file encoding as you have the setting on the Import Records screen set to.

Make sure they’re the same and then all records will import.

Open the CSV file in BBEdit or some program like that and it will tell you what the file encoding is of the file. But generally if it was made on a Windows computer you would choose Windows Latin 1. Or if it came from Excel for Mac or FileMaker you would probably choose MacOS Roman. In all other cases usually UTF-8 is appropriate.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Glen Forister]

The problem:
1 – imported 38 items.
2 – imported complete list included the 38 items in 1.
3 – all both lists were added together and 38 are in there twice.
4 – after the first import, I did a lot of work to configure the fields and don’t want to start over.
Question:
1 – Is there a way to delete the 38 records that have duplicates. I thought when I imported the total list the 38 would not be added again.
2 – If I discover I have a similar situation, how do I avoid the problem?

Can the template file can be used if I save the template and start a new FORM, import the template file and then import the complete not duplicates list and that will fix the problem without losing work on configuring the fields again?
I don’t see that discussed here:
https://www.tapforms.com/help-mac/5.3/en/topic/exporting

[Brendan]

Whoops. I am sorry I misread your initial question. This was not about the file encoding.

If your file has a form_record_id column in it that includes a unique identifier for each row, then Tap Forms will update those records instead of adding them.

But if you import the same file multiple times, you’ll get duplicates because Tap Forms has no way of knowing that the data is the same because there’s no unique identifier to key off of.

You’ll have to just sort your records in a way that you can see the duplicates and then select the duplicates manually and delete them yourself.

If you want to start a new form, keeping the fields you’ve already created, use the Duplicate Form command to make a copy of that form. Now you’ll have a new form with the same fields but without any records.

[Author]

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