Importing from Panorama, with multiple paragraphs in text fields

[Ellen Herzfeld]

I have been using Panorama for ages but now, for various reasons, I want to switch to a more modern database, especially one that syncs to iPhone and iPad. My database has about 13000 records, each with about 25 fields. Some of these fields contain multiple paragraphs of text.

I have tried exporting and importing parts of the database so as not to work with the whole thing at one time while I explore TF. I exported a selection of about 2000 records as a tab delimited text file and imported it as such. The first row contains the field names and this was correctly imported into TF. I set the text fields containing multiple paragraphs to “Note” in TF and this was correctly applied. However, these multiple paragraphs seem to have been separated from the containing record and imported as if they were separated records, with the data ending up isolated and in the wrong fields.

My question is, what should I do to have TF correctly recognize records and fields?

Also, will I have problems with the iPhone/iPad apps with a database of this size?

Thanks,

Ellen

[Brendan]

Hi Ellen,

You will want to make sure that your multi-line note fields have the proper carriage quoting around them to be able to import them properly.

For example:

Movie Title<text>,Summary<note>
The Terminator, "Robert Patrick
was a great T-1000. But it was
Arnie who really stole the show.
""I'll be back!"""

Notice the “”I’ll be back!”” bit. All double-quotes within the content need to be escaped with another double quote. And because the entire note is in double-quotes in order to support the new-lines within the text, there’s a corresponding close double quote at the end of back!”””

Hope that makes sense.

I’m not sure how Panorama Sheets handles exporting data like that. You may also need to try out a few different file encodings if Panorama supports different encodings during export. UTF-8 is a good one to try first. Also, it’s important to make sure the File Encoding setting in Tap Forms matches exactly the file encoding of the actual CSV file.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Ellen Herzfeld]

Hello,

I formatted the exported records as you instructed and imported the text file into TF. Only 1537 records out of 12811 were imported. The import stopped in the middle of a record, in the middle of a field. I thought there might be some control character that had blocked the import but didn’t find any. I did this twice and the result was exactly the same. The records that did get imported seemed OK.

I then simply removed the offending record from the formatted text file and then imported again. This time, all the records were imported (minus the one I had removed) that is 12810 records.

I checked the offending record very carefully and did not find anything that could explain the problem.

So that’s the first step done anyway. Thanks.

Ellen

[LeoC2]

Ellen, greetings from a fellow Panorama user! I’ve been using it since its Omni days. Since Pan sadly isn’t available to use in IOS I’m also evaluating TF but what I’m doing is creating forms in TF and exporting the data, pictures and all, to the Mac to have Panorama do the analysis. I now have Panorama not only analyzing the data but saving each record as a PDF file in Dropbox for users to access.

I’m curious how you will replace Pan with TF, they can work together but neither can replace the other.

Leo

[Ellen Herzfeld]

Hello Leo,

I did love Panorama for years, since the time it was called OverVUE. Really amazing piece of software. But it has slowly been going in directions that do not interest me. And now it’s almost unusable on a recent Mac with the latest OS. I can’t use it with the Magic Mouse. And it can hardly keep two views in sync. So I’m getting a bit tired of it. I had transferred some of my databases to Bento and then that was abandoned. I still have a few databases in Panorama and like to keep it around if I need to “massage” some data. But I need my stuff on the iPad and iPhone so I have to find a new home for my databases. The ones that I had put into Bento are now in FileMaker. But I don’t like FM (neither the software nor the company) much. It’s not only the price, as I’m quite willing to pay for good stuff. Nor the learning curve, as there is ample documentation. The worst part is that it doesn’t really sync with the iThings. You have to transfer the databases by hand and sync the device. In 2014…

I find it really strange that there is no good, reliable database software on the Mac with effortless syncing. TapForms is nice and I had a look at it a bit over a year ago. It wasn’t stable enough for me at that time. Now, I’m trying it again, but I’m afraid my needs are still way over its head.

I do know what it means to develop software and I greatly admire Brendan for his work and support but I think you can only expect so much from a single person effort.

Ellen

[LeoC2]

“And now it’s almost unusable on a recent Mac with the latest OS. I can’t use it with the Magic Mouse. And it can hardly keep two views in sync.”

Something is wrong on your Mac for sure. I use Panorama constantly on a most recent MacBook Pro and OS Yosemite with no problem at all. In addition, I also use a Magic Mose with no problem. It think you have a hardware problem that needs resolving.

[Ellen Herzfeld]

Well, that’s interesting. Here, the problems mentioned affect two different people on different machines. They appeared quite a while ago, on older machines using a previous OS. So that means the hardware problems would have existed on four different machines and across a number of OS updates.

Actually, I think what happens is that Panorama does not react correctly to gestures with the Magic Mouse (or the Trackpad) in list view. It moves up and down from one record to another as soon a I touch the surface of the Mouse or Trackpad. It should not change records but just scroll. The way it works is not at all adapted to the new input devices. I suppose this may not be a a problem in some situations and use cases. In mine it is.

In list view in FileMaker or in TapForms, this does not happen. The view scrolls but the active record does not change. To move from one record to another you must click. TapForms even does better than FileMaker here because you can move from one record to another in list view with the keyboard arrows, which is impossible in FileMaker, at least the way I have set it up.

Ellen

[LeoC2]

I suggest you submit these problems to the Panorama Q&A list. You can email your problems to the list and receive answers direct form other users. The address is: qna@provue.com. You may have to sign up on the Panorama web site, http://www.provue.com, if you’re not already a member.

But to re-iterate… I’m finding that Tap Forms once set up can integrate very well with Panorama. My goal after testing is to have as many as 10 IOS devices in the field, sync them to my iPad and export the data for use by Panorama. If there’s internet access it’s a simple process but without internet I can set up a local WiFi from the Mac and extract the data from each device for import into Panorama. So far testing is working well but I would like to see a few tweeks to Tap Forms such as capitalization settings and easier iCloud sync.

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