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Importing allows you to insert many records into the database in one go. This would save you manually adding new entries into the database one by one. The file to be imported needs to be in a certain format, referred to as a tab-delimited file.

Exhaustive validation of data to be imported is not carried out by the program. It assumes that you, as the user, have ensured the data to be imported is valid and that it is indeed appropriate to do so. You import data entirely at your own risk and I accept no responsibility for any loss of data caused.

When you press the Import button, it displays a window for you to select the data file to import. You are informed if the file could not be opened for whatever reason.

You are then asked if you want to delete the current table contents. Please be aware of any other tables which might refer to this current table. If you delete such entries, you are effectively removing this relationship. It won't actually delete the table until it has established that it is safe to add the import data. If you choose not to delete the table, or the program can't delete the table for some reason, it will append the data instead (if the data being imported is valid to append).

If the data file is being appended to the current table, then it will check to see if any talk number already exists in the table. You will be notified if this is detected and the import process will be aborted. Duplicate entries found within the import data itself will simply get ignored, so only the first entry will get added. Other reasons that will trigger an abort are:

• If the talk category is not valid
• If it was unable to read in entry information from the file

It proceeds to import the records into the database once the import data has been successfully validated.

As mentioned at the top of this help topic, the import file must be tab-delimited, which means that each line of text in the file represents an entry to add into the database. The information on each line is separated using TAB characters. The order of the information on each line must match the following template:

Talk Number [TAB] Talk Title [TAB] Talk Category [TAB] Times Heard [TAB] Last Date Heard [TAB] Outline Date [TAB] Has Digital Media [TAB] Exclude  [TAB] Exclude From [TAB] Notes [CR]

• [TAB] represents the tab character
• [CR] represents a carriage return

Each item of information must be entered correctly. Here is a breakdown:

If the above items are kept in mind when importing, you should have no problems.

All lines of text starting with a semi-colon ; are treated as comments and are ignored.