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The BISON Text Importer is designed to pre-process both formatted text files as well as some proprietary formats which can be interpreted and processed as text files (e.g. the result of an Excel spreadsheet import). To ease understanding, the dialog is designed to mimic the way in which common importers used in third-party spreadsheets have often been displayed.
Different text files, especially if produced on different operating systems (which use different end-of-line characters) result in the underlying text being loaded into the importer in different ways. The first thing to do therefore, is to tweak import settings until the list of results at the bottom of the dialog show a logical data set rather than 'garbage'.
The three main values for the initial understanding of the text are:
For an Excel spreadsheet import, the Importer already knows how to read the standard internal structure of an Excel file. For this reason, the Record Delimiter, Field Delimiter and Protection character are locked and the data imported without the need to change these values.
Three additional settings may also modify how the data is displayed on the screen:
Once the data sample is reading correctly and the rows in the results list seem correct, you need to define what each field actually means. While there may be a header row with human-readable text, this is not a row which can be interpreted by the importer. You need to match the field up with a known set of fields for the type of import that you are performing.
Beneath the Header row is a second row initially containing the text [> <None>]. These are the field names as allocated to the importer for processing. Right-click each of these cells in turn to display a list of known fields for the import type being performed - select the appropriate field definition from the menu.
If an imported field is redundant and is not required, leave the field definition as <None> to ignore the data.
Once the final, full set of data is loaded and viewed, it is possible to make minor changes to data that is considered to be incorrect.
It is recommended to perform these edits in an external editor or even better on the source application rather than here in the importer so as to ensure that the data is consistent in both applications.
To edit a cell, select [Edit Mode] to fix the current state of the data. Double-click any cell which needs to be edited to display an editable text field.
Once the data is in an acceptable state on screen, select the [Next»] button to process the file using the selected configuration.
In many cases the file can be process immediately and the data written into the database (common for Item imports), but for others you will be returned to the proceeding BISON Import dialog for finalisation.