Importing from Word???

[charly]

Hi

I need to import contents from a Word file into Filemaker, I've heard that it's possible with something called Parsing, but I have no clue how that works. I'm designing a solution for people who would have different questions on the Word file, so would need some kind of solution where there is possibly a chance of putting the question into a field of its own as well as putting the answer into a field... Is there a script that I could write so that it could be attached to a button so it is nice and easy for low-tech users?

Thanks in advance,

Charly

[DanBrill]

Hi Charly,

Parsing refers to breaking up a long stream of text to find its meaningful parts. You could look at the text functions to get an idea where to begin. You'll need to get familiar with functions like length, left, right, leftwords, right words, substitute, and the like. Basically you'll be looking for "tags" in your text stream like "Question 1:" and "Answer 1:", and breaking up the text from there. You'd probably also want to export from word to plain text to get rid of all the formatting codes first.

But honestly, I'd rethink using Word as a data entry tool if at all possible. It would be much easier for people to supply the data on an on-line html form that you could bring into FileMaker. Or off-line, think about using Excel. Otherwise, you are going to have a lot of parsing to do. Moreover, the limit of an FM text field is 64,000 characters, so you'll be limited in how much you can read.

Dan