Products  |  Solutions  |  Support  |  Download  |  Order

Home  |  Forum  |  Knowledge Base  |  Search

Knowledge Base

Import Bibliographic Records From Spreadsheet and Database Programs- December 08, 1998

If you keep your reference collection in a spreadsheet program like: Excel, Quadro Pro, Lotus 123, or in a desktop database program like: Access, Paradox, Approach, File Maker Pro, etc. You can import your references into Biblioscape database as a tab or comma delimited file. But you need to do some data massaging in a spreadsheet first. The following example shows you how to prepare data for importing using Excel. If you still have problems importing as a tab or comma delimited file, you can email us for help.

If you need to import from Access database, click here to download a detailed instruction written by Ove Fossa.

Warning: You should not import all your records into one folder. It will cause slow screen redraw when the number of records is large. You can break up the export file and import them to different folders, or you can choose not to import records into any folder by checking off the "To folder" during import.

1. If you use a desktop database program like Access, Approach, or Paradox, the first step is to export table as Excel file. Please go to "File | Export", then select "Excel (*.xls)" as file format.

2. Start Excel, open the reference data file. The first row has to be the data field name. The following table shows you all the data field name you can use.

Note: Memo fields like "Abstract" can't be imported as delimited file. Because it may contain tab, even line breaks. For Notes field, if your data only have one line of text, it can be included. Otherwise remove it in Excel.

Field Name	Type	Length
Accession_num	A	20
Address	A	255
Attachment	A	255
Authors	A	255
Availability	A	50
Call_number	A	30
Categories	A	100
Country	A	30
Custom_1	A	255
Custom_2	A	255
Custom_3	A	100
Custom_4	A	100
Custom_5	A	50
Custom_6	A	50
Date_freeform	A	20
Date_input	D
Date_modified	D
Date_pub	D
Description	A	150
Edition	A	20
Extent_work	A	20
File_as	A	30
Internal	A	20
Isbn_issn	A	20
Keywords	M	240
Label	A	60
Language	A	30
Last_post	A	22
Location	A	150
Modified_by	A	20
Notes	M	240
Number	A	20
Page_end	A	20
Page_start	A	20
Place_pub	A	100
Priority	A	10
Publisher	A	150
Quat_authors	A	255
Quat_title	A	255
Ref_doc	M	240
Ref_ID	I
Ref_mark	A	1
Ref_misc	M	240
Ref_read	A	1
Ref_type	A	30
Ref_type_ID	S
Ref_user	A	30
Reprint	A	12
Sec_authors	A	255
Sec_title	A	255
Section	A	20
Subject	A	100
Tert_authors	A	255
Tert_title	A	255
Title	A	255
Title_short	A	100
Type_work	A	100
URL	A	255
Volume	A	20
Web_post_hide	A	1
Work_reviewed	A	100
Year_pub	S

You should then use Excel to make sure the data satisfy the requirement depending on the data field. All the 3 date fields "Date_pub", "Date_input", and "Date_modified" have to be in the format of "5/21/1998". The data for "Year_pub" have to be an integer. For all the authors fields, individual author must be separated by "; ", Individual keyword in "Keywords" field has also to be separated by "; ".

You may have to break pages "12-23" into two separate column in Excel. You should insert the blank column first after the "Pages" column, select the "Pages" column, then go to menu command "Data | Text to Columns...".

3. After massaging the data to meet all the requirement, go to menu command "File | Save As...", select "Text (Tab delimited) (*.txt)" as file format.

4. Start Biblioscape, go to menu command "File | Import", select the importing file first, go to "Delimited" tab, select "Tab" as "Data fields separated by". Uncheck the "To folder" button. Click "Start" to import.

 

 

Last updated on March 02, 2004  E-mail us at support@biblioscape.com
© Copyright 2003 CG Information All Rights Reserved