Bugged Import Tap Forms Archive

[Tommy Ydier]

Im not sure if it is just me but there seems to be huge bugs with Import Tap Forms Archive, importing the first .tfarc in a new document seems to work fine, but if you try to reimport it or import other archives next in the same document they just start doing horrible stuff and seem to be overriding or stacking into eachother even when they have different names im not sure whats going on.

[tonyt]

Me too.

[Brendan]

It’s because a .tfarc file contains unique IDs that are specific to the form they came from during the initial export. So importing it into the same document multiple times will just overwrite what was there, even if you rename the .tfarc file. The name of the .tfarc file has nothing to do with the name of the form it’s importing in to.

[Tommy Ydier]

But the .tfarc aren’t just different names they come from different forms too, and it still does weird stuff when imported into the same document.

[Colleen Easley]

Yes, I have this problem also. I have 2 databases with a total of 3 forms – One in one database and 2 in the other database. I exported the one single one as an archive and imported it to the other database, hoping to have all three forms in one database. Instead, it just merged with one of the existing forms. What a mess I’ve ended up with. For now I’m leaving the 3rd form in its own database until this gets resolved.

[Brendan]

If you renamed a form but it’s really the same form as another, then that can cause this kind of problem.

Tap Forms has an internal ID for each form. That’s used when exporting and importing from a Tap Forms Archive file.

So if you did something like created a Form A in Document A, then exported that Form A, then imported that Form A into Document B, that’s ok. But if you then rename the original Form A to Form B in Document A, then exported that Form B and then imported that Form B into Document B, then it would overwrite Form A in Document B because they started from the original same Form A.

Then you can end up with something you didn’t want.

Not sure if that’s what happened in this case. But the only time a form and its records will merge with another form’s records is when they’re really the same form, despite them having different form names.

Hope that makes sense.

Brendan

[Colleen Easley]

You may have hit on the reason. I originally had my form NPPNW combined with my OCC and TCF forms in one database. Then exported it to it’s own database. Now I want to bring NPPNW back in with the other two forms and every time, it combine with the TCF form instead of creating its own file.

The only reason I even wanted to do this was because of the new thing with IBM Cloudant. It synced fine with my database that had OCC and TCF in them, but when I tried to use the same credentials for NPPNW it errored out. I guess I have to create another set of credentials for NPPNW? In the meantime, I’ve just switched it to iCloud and it’s fine. Might just leave well enough alone.

[Brendan]

Hi Colleen,

You can sync separate database documents to Cloudant using the same credentials. Tap Forms will create a separate database in Cloudant for each document. But if you had copied a document in the Finder, without using Tap Forms’ built-in Duplicate Document command, then this would cause a problem with any of the sync services.

You don’t need to create a new account for each document. Just make sure your documents are indeed different. You can find that out by looking at the Document ID. You can see the Document ID on the Document Info panel on Mac and iOS. Click the (i) button to see the Document Info panel.

[Author]

Posts