Hello,
I need to find new personal database software to replace a very old Filemaker Pro (v10.0.3) that is now incompatible with Mac OS Catalina.
The files I have are generally very simplistic text based fields in their makeup but extremely useful. I’ve had a look at the trial version of TapForms and have tried just dropping the FMPro files into the icon (doesn’t work) and then exporting records via a tab separated text file and can’t get that running either.
In addition, I’ve no idea what ‘forms’ are and what they are supposed to do.
Can anyone make my life easy on this problem?
Thanks.
Nik
Hello Nik,
Thanks for your interest in Tap Forms!
Forms are like tables in FileMaker. A Form in Tap Forms is a container for Fields and Records. The fields define the structure of the form and the records are your data.
You can import a CSV / tab delimited file into Tap Forms. You just need to create a new document first so that you have something you can import into. Then use the File > Import Records command.
I would recommend though that from FileMaker you export your records as a Merge format file. When you use that format, FileMaker will write a header row with the names of the fields in your table. Tap Forms needs this first row of field names to know what fields to create during the import process.
Also, you’ll want to get the File Encoding setting correct in Tap Forms on the Import Records window. You may need to use MacOS Roman. If that doesn’t bring in all the data properly, try UTF-8. Or you can use BBEdit to find out what the file encoding of the file you exported from FileMaker is.
.
