Migrating from Airtable

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  • June 2, 2023 at 11:53 AM #49530

    John Parker
    Participant

    Hi, I’m trying the Tap Forms demo in hopes of leaving Airtable, but I’m having a rough time with the CSV import. I can’t tell if the problem is the way Airtable exports certain field data to the CSV or if it’s some kind of TF5 import setting or bug.

    The problem is that when I hit import, it creates a new form but does not actually import any records from the CSV. The Airtable CSV is definitely UTF-8 and comma delimited. Tap Forms is also set to add missing fields. Also I’m just importing the CSV fields as text—nothing fancy.

    I’ve also noticed that sometimes a CSV import will only work if I first quit and relaunch Tap Forms. Not sure what’s going on there.

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    June 4, 2023 at 12:43 AM #49537

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Hi John ,

    Hmm… That looks like it should work.

    Would you be able to email me a sample CSV file that’s not importing and I can take a look at it for you?

    Thanks,

    Brendan

    June 4, 2023 at 9:04 AM #49540

    John Parker
    Participant

    Thanks Brendan, that CSV file called “Keys” is attached in the initial post. It appears that Tap Forms is not liking the “Symbols” field for some reason. They are unicode characters though, so I’m not sure what’s going on.

    I have a couple of other forms that each contain the full list of commands for applications I use frequently. These applications have thousands of commands, so I’m setting this up as a way to learn the commands more deeply.

    The forms for each application are linked to this keys form and have records that each contain multiple symbols (e.g. Cmd + Opt + P). I also need to figure out how to import these application forms so I don’t have to manually relink thousands of commands to the Keys form.

    June 4, 2023 at 10:47 AM #49541

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Oh, I’m sorry. I missed seeing the CSV file there. Thought it was just the screenshot.

    So you’re right, Tap Forms is not importing this file. I think it’s because of the characters you have in the first column.

    Currently the CSV parser I’m using is not handling them properly. But I am working on a new version of Tap Forms which has this issue resolved. I imported into that version no problem.

    But there is a workaround.

    Setup a form with the same field names, then switch to the multi-column list view. Add one empty record. Then click the first cell of that record.

    Go back to your CSV file and change all the commas to tab characters. You can do this in BBEdit or some other plain text editor.

    Now select all the values in your text editor and press command-c to copy all the values.

    Back in Tap Forms, make sure the first cell of the first record is selected.

    Press command-v to paste in the contents of the clipboard.

    Tap Forms will now create one record for each line of values that’s on the clipboard.

    This will work and will have all the unique characters in your file.

    Sorry for this glitch. It’s just because of the unique characters that this is an issue. And as I mentioned, it’s fixed for the new version of Tap Forms I’m working on.

    Thanks,

    Brendan

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