How to Import from a text doc. for example Word?

[sage]

I am getting word docs. from a friend and want to put the info Filemaker in order to help him. How might I solve this? I am a beginner in Filemaker.

I have uploaded the filemaker database here:

http://www.sushiking.no/filemaker/

The file is: "Spirituell_Film_test.fp3"

The report of the file Spirituell_Film_test.fp3, is best viewed in the layout:

UK_ Report

I did also upload the word doc , which I need to import into the Filemaker doc.

That file is "members.doc". Located at the same url.

All the info is of course changed so no personal info is being published.

There are also a couple of questions embedded in the word doc which some of you might have solutions to.

[Lee Smith]

Hi sage, and Welcome to the Forum,

I don't have time right now to look your files over, but I wanted to let you know that if you put these in a folder and use .zip, you can upload them to the Forum directly.

I not sure about others, but the FileMaker 3 document didn't come across as one, I had to change if from a Text Document to FileMaker to make it work.

HTH

Lee

[Fenton]

I don't even have FileMaker 3-4 on my machine anymore. Not that it won't do the trick, but you're going to have a hard time finding examples. There are several examples here on "parsing" text, which would help you; but they're all going to be either FileMaker 5-6 or FileMaker 7 format.

To get started however, this AppleScript will get the text out of a Word doc, onto the clipboard.

tell application "Finder"

set wordFileRef to choose file

end tell

tell application "Microsoft Word"

activate

open wordFileRef

select text of last document

copy

close last document

end tell

Copy/paste the above into a Perform AppleScript step. Then a New Record step. Then Paste [no style, your text field].

That'll get the whole Word doc into FileMaker (up to 64K anyway; you cannot handle large documents this way). Then it's a matter of parsing each line.

[sage]

Hi There Lee. Glad to hear from you guys. I am using Filemaker 4. I now it is veeeery old. And that I should upgrade. I will in the future. I think it is Filemaker 6 which still works with Os 9 is it not? I do also think that it should be possible to do the things I would like to here with this issue with Filemaker 4?

Anyway this forum seems nice.

Thanks.

Do I need to make those to files a zip or can it remain uploaded where it is for now. Do you prefer zips uploaded?

So you managed to open the Filemaker file even though it was from Filemaker 4?

Sage

[sage]

Fenton. Thanks. I do not now where to start. But I now how to cut and paste. I used to do some nice stuff in Qa4 in the old days. Programming on a Ms Dos machine. That was fun! I am rellay looking forward to get the grip on Filemaker.

I am not to much into Apple Scripting. Is your routine doing much like the same of cut and paste?

Is that where it all starts? Pasting the document into Filemaker? I thought maybe that you shold try to make FM import the Word doc and make some kind of filtering or programming within FM in order to seperate and put the info into the right fields?

If you take a look at the Word doc. in relation to the database I have uploaded it might perhaps become clearer, what I am trying to explain ?

[Fenton]

Yes, the routine is almost exactly copy and paste. If you select text and copy in Word, then, in FileMaker, Paste, without style, you get just the text, which is all you want. You are going to have to bring it into FileMaker in one piece however, then break into into its parts.

Which will be fine, unless it's a big document, in which case you'll have to rethink. It is also possible to have Word convert and save the files as plain text, or even to process "on the fly" with AppleScript reading from Word 1 line at a time. But I'm a FileMaker developer, not a Word processor; so I prefer to do most parsing in FileMaker.

What I said about FileMaker 4 being old was not because it could not be done in 4, because it could. It's that we've already covered several examples of "parsing" text here, similar to yours, which would show you some of how to do it with FileMaker. But I doubt if any of those files are in version 3-4 format; and they don't convert backwards; though we can convert your .fp3 files forward.

I don't know where you could find a demo of version 6 (good for a month); but maybe you could find a copy of 6 cheap somewhere online. It runs fine in 9 :-)

[sage]

Hi again Fenton. I have came a cross a link that might help others (to download Filemaker Pro 6 testversion).

http://www.filemaker.co.uk/products/try_filemaker.html

I shall get Filemaker 6 soon as a trial.

[Lee Smith]

Hi Sage,

I still [color:"blue"]have v4 on my machine.

Use the .zip format for your files, the Window platforms have a problem with the .sit file format. However, the Mac users can handle either format, thanks to Stuffit.

Lee