Can anyone help me with a solution?? Please?! :-)

We are tracking foster care youth. Placement agencies give us an excel file with the youth and all their placements - the youth are duplicated in the file- there could be up to 20 different placements or schools they have attended. How do I import these youth into specific fields I have defined? I am baffled at how to do this import... Can you help? or do you need more information? Thanks in advance.

You may want to use an intermediate file or table to import the records and weed out the duplicates, then import the cleaned-up list into your working file/table.

ya.. i guess that's the part i'm having problems with.. only the student is duplicated - with new placements - i'm having a hard time figuring out how to get the students into my "real" file and the placements into their respective fields... does that make anymore sense?

ok - i don't think i explained my situation well enough. If i do that i will have multiple files - for the same student

here are the columns from what i get from a placement agency in an EXCEL file

YouthName, PlacementName, PlacementDateIn, PDateOut, Location

they LIST all the placements for each kid - for instance a student could be listed as many as 30 times for placements they have been in under the above columns:

JohnSmith, The Farm, xx/xx/xx, xx/xx/xx, Topeka

JohnSmith, KVC, xx/xx/xx, xx/xx/xx, Wichita

JohnSmith, Youthville, xx/xx/xx, xx/xx/xx, Lawrence

JohnSmith, The Shelter, xx/xx/xx, xx/xx/xx, Kansas City

JohnSmith, Youthville, xx/xx/xx, xx/xx/xx, Lawrence

and so on... does this make sense? Each placement has to go into it's own field - with no duplicates... I have defined

i hope this makes more sense... i appreciate the help if you can make sense of what i am asking..

Don't use fields, use related records.

You get one person's file at a time, right?

Import just the name into a Person table, and that table should also have an auto-entered serial number.

Import all the records into a Placements table (don't import the name, just all the other info). Then set the serial number from the Person table into a Person ID in the Placements table.

Relate the two tables by Person ID and you're on your way.

ok i believe i understand how to do this - however, i do not get one student at a time - i get them all together in one excel file - i believe i can manipulate the data as you said tho-

thanks so much for your help... i'll let you know how it goes - hopefully i can figure this out - i have to do school placements also.. B)

fitch,

take a look at this recent post that deals with a situation very much like yours.

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/191931

Regards,

Don

I DID IT!

THANK YOU!