Merging Forms

[TEIB]

Hi,

Want to merge forms because new forms have generated on their own splitting our address book.

We have our address book form with 3590 entries on both computers. Then we have an additional two address books with a smaller amount of entries that just appeared on both of our computers when opening Tap Forms today. The records on the new forms that appeared are not in the larger address book.

How can we merge the records in the smaller, new address book forms into the main address book form?

Thanks!

[David Butenhof]

I’d be worried about how those new forms “generated on their own”. Could this be some subtle user error, or is it an obscure TapForms (or iCloud) sync bug?

However, in terms of simply re-merging them, this should be straightforward so long as they have the same columns defined.

1. Open one of the “small” forms, and File > Export Records … on a Mac into a CSV file on the Desktop.
2. File > Import (File > Import Records…) the CSV file you just exported. Make sure you select the “large” form in the “Select a form to import into” popup rather than taking the default to create a new form.

You should first make a TapForms backup (File > Backup…) so that you can Restore if something goes wrong; but that’s always a good idea when you’re doing more than just modifying a record or two.

Once you have the “small” forms merged back into the “large” form, you can delete the small forms and hope they aren’t re-created. But, again, this is all really a workaround for whatever caused your problem in the first place.

[Brendan]

If you suddenly had two forms the same, it may be because the files were imported on two different computers with the same name and then synced. Without syncing or without manually importing another file with the same name, I can’t see how a form would simply be duplicated. Did you ever find out how this happened? Was it maybe a cancelled import that happened perhaps?

The problem with merging your forms of course is you might end up with duplicate records.

[TEIB]

I think it is an issue with the iCloud sync not working.

Please let me know how to merge the forms. I already checked, and there are no duplicates.

Both the main address book and the small address book use a custom template with several tabs originally created in Bento – if I exported as a CSV file wouldn’t I loose all of that?

Thanks for your help!

[David Butenhof]

If you export the “small duplicate” forms as CSV and then import them back into the “large main” form, the large form should retain all characteristics, but the new records will be added to it. Yes, if you imported the CSV as a new form you’d lose any design/configuration — but that’s not what you’re doing. What you end up with should be exactly the same as using the form’s “+” button and typing in each of those records manually.

Be careful, though, when checking for “duplicates”. It’s good that none of your names are duplicated, so you won’t end up with “duplicate records”. However it’s still possible (although unlikely) that the form_record_id column might have duplicate values. When you import the CVS files, that column is how TapForms determines whether the records are “the same”, and it’ll treat an identical form_record_id as an UPDATE to the existing record. (That’s how sync works.)

In order to check this you’d need to either export the “large” form as CSV or access the TapForms sqlite database directly, and run a script comparing the form_record_id values between the two forms. It’s not something that would be easy to do visually since the values are long meaningless strings.

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