Tuesday 23 October 2012

Calling the technically inclined

Ok, so perhaps this isn't quite the typical use for the blog, but I'm wondering if anyone out there knows a technically inclined friend, who might be a programmer, who can help.

I'm switching databases that I use to store my research. I've been using Microsoft Access but this isn't available for my new Mac. I would like to test out Filemaker but need to get the material in Access over to Filemaker. It's not, for me, a straightforward process. And from what I've been reading, it might even involve writing a program to do it. Any ideas?

I know that Zotero is probably even better but I don't think it will take in my data from Access. Perhaps for the next book...





3 comments:

  1. If you export your Access database to some sort of text format:
    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/export-data-to-a-text-file-HA010006905.aspx
    comma delimited with quotes, would probably be best,
    then it should be fairly straightforward to import that back into Filemaker.

    If it needs any coding to re-format it for Filemaker input, I'd be happy to give you a hand - I cah whip up a Python script pretty easily that would re-encode it properly.

    -Cheers,
    Daniel Simeone,
    Doctoral candidate,
    McGill University

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  2. Read this:
    http://www.filemaker.com/help/html/import_export.16.19.html#1041065

    It claims it takes ODBC input, which Access should almost certainly be able to export to. (It would be embarassing if it can't.)

    That might be easier.

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  3. Many, many thanks for this help Daniel. I'll see if I can't make it work. If not I'll reply later.

    I had tried putting it into Excel but I discovered that excel cells are pretty limited in what they can hold and so I lost most of the info from my larger fields. html didn't work either.

    Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete