New User – Help Please!

[Roy]

I’m a new user converting from Bento. I’ve purchase your Mac, IPad and iPhone products. I’m only working with Mac (Mavericks) at the moment.

I’ve exported my Bento data into Tap Forms – some – not all came in OK. I’m also a little lost in your formatting. The only option on date import is text (see below). Furthermore, many Bento fields do not survive the import.

If I enter the date time format in the import option – I get a blank field. I do get data if I use the “text” format. However, If after I import Bento data and want to enter a new item (date created) – the program format is text and not date. I need to enter new items in a date format. Secondly, I cannot sort this data properly. What am I missing?

I’m sorry, but you have no help manual so I’m lost.

[Brendan]

Hi Roy,

Have you watched the screencasts on importing data into Tap Forms Mac? There are some links to the Youtube videos on my support page at https://www.tapforms.com/support.html

But the important thing is to set the date format to be the same as you have for your data from Bento. For example, if your date format is something like 31/12/2013 then you would need to set Tap Forms to use dd/MM/yyyy as its date format before you import the file. On the Import Records screen you also need to select Date from the popup. If your dates also include times, then use the Date & Time field type. But in this situation you need to also set the time format to match your Date & Time data from Bento.

One other issue is that Bento puts the letter T between the date and the time values. You will need to replace that with a space character before you import. Tap Forms will then take the date format and the time format and put a space in between. It will be able to interpret the Date & Time field data properly then. The next update for Tap Forms Mac won’t require you to replace the T with a space.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Roy]

Thanks, I did look at the Screen Casts but they have not helped. I can import the Bento data as ASCII without a problem. However, I want to add new records as I go along. If I use your Date Format for that field, all of the ASCII values are blank. I don’t want to go back to manually entering an ASCII date when a pop up exists. I have the same problem with any non ASCII field, e.g., If I used a checkmark in Bento it comes across to TF as a 0 or 1. If I then change the field in TF to checkmark I get a blanks for the ASCII data import. Same goes for Stars, etc.

I would appreciate any advice that you may have. As it stands now TF is of very little use to me.

[Brendan]

Hello Roy,

My apologies for implying you had to use the date format I specified in my previous reply. It really all depends on the date format of your data itself. If you send me a sample file then I can tell you what the date format should be. But it’s really just a matter of looking into the CSV file and finding that out. You can look at the data preview that Tap Forms shows you prior to you importing your data and then set the Date Format popup appropriately to match. Sometimes you have to scroll through your data to find out for sure because what’s the difference between 1/2/2014 and 2/1/2014? Is that January 2, 2014 or February 1, 2014? It’s important to get that right or you won’t get your dates imported correctly.

It sounds to me like for your checkmark fields you’ve selected Text as the field type during the import process? You should choose the Checkmark field type instead before you import.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Roy]

Thank you,

The problem reported was mine and I must apologize.

i exported my data from Bento as a Numbers file since the Bento .csv export lost data. I then exported the data from Numbers to a .csv file format and then to TapForms. The result being a blank field if the import format was DATE. If the input format was TEXT the date appeared as correct, but was not a DATE field.

My problem was that I did not FORMAT the Date field in my numbers document – simple error since the dates looked OK in numbers, but they had to be formated as a date field for the proper transfer to TapForms. Once I did the proper formating everything worked properly.

[Brendan]

Hi Roy,

That’s great to hear. I’m glad you got it figured out.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Author]

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