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Submitted by gregory on 2011/06/06 04:58

Hello.

I wish to copy a large number of appointments from one IQ base to another.

In the first base, I have a grid called appointments. I select and copy the appointments to be copied.

In the second base, I paste the appointments.

The result is a series of items whose text is a number and which have an appointment set as the date and time current at the point at which the items are pasted. Not very helpful!

Please: what should I be doing in order to copy appointments from one IQ base to another?

Pierre: j'espère que tu t'es bien amusé dans notre belle France?

Mark

Comments

Hi Mark,

Is it possible that you were selecting cells instead of selecting the full item?

Or maybe choosing an incorrect copy option.

I just tried this out - I'm not that familiar with this kind of thing, so I'll just describe exactly what I did:

opened sample database,
selected the last item in the Appointments grid - selected by clicking in the number cell on the left (# column)
copied (choose "Selected Items" from the options given)

went to my usual database.

Opened appointments grid
Clicked on an item in the grid and pasted
new item was formed at the bottom of the list - looks as expected

You'll have to make sure that you have the same type of fields (and same field names) in each database e.g. Appointments is a date field etc. - I'm not sure what will happen if one is missing or incorrect.

It's possible there are other methods (e.g. selecting cells) - someone else may chime in.

XP - SP3 IQ Portable - up-to-date

Sorry Tom, we answered at the same time... But I posted after getting a coffee and forgot to check if answers had been posted in the mean time.:)

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Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 2

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU:Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

Here is a video on one way to do it:

Dave

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Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, Gateway DX4320, AMD Phenom II x6, 6GB RAM

Thanks Dave T, that's a great way to show how to do things - makes it all a lot clearer.

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

Gregory,

Your welcome. I read somewhere, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a hundred thousand." I believe that.

I could not have figured out how to copy and paste without the recent help from Armando and Tom. I hope to make some video tutorials for the IQ Community as I gain more IQ knowledge.

Dave

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Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, Gateway DX4320, AMD Phenom II x6, 6GB RAM

That is very helpful Dave -

I always simply use Ctrl+C to copy, so I never noticed the different context menus.

In the destination database, you do have to select an item if you want to use the context menu - but it can be any item - again, it has to be selected using the # column. This is actually not necessary if you use Ctrl+V but should not be necessary at all even for when using the context menu.

It would be better if the item context menu recognised that an item has been copied and offtered a Paste Item option or something along those lines

So that's 2 mantis issues imo !! - I could add them later or tomorrow

Hi Tom,

Thanks. I agree with your suggested improvements. +1

Dave

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Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, Gateway DX4320, AMD Phenom II x6, 6GB RAM

There are many things/issues described in this thread (calendar events assignation + copy paste problems) and, frankly, apart from the calendar events assignation problem, I'm not sure I understand them all. Before adding anything to Mantis, could they be either reworded or explained ? thanks.

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Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 2

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU:Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

Mantis issues I suggested above:

1) if you select an item - right-clicking anywhere in the item, and clicking the "Copy" icon, should then invoke the copy dialogue. This is currently only invoked via the context menu for the # column.

2) when an item has been copied, right-click in empty space in the grid should show, and allow, pasting of the items (as TLI's)

Thanks Tom,

I think there's a bit of confusion in #1 -- which probably means that one UI thing or two should be modified anyway.

>1) if you select an item - right-clicking anywhere in the item, and clicking the "Copy" icon, should then invoke the copy dialogue. This is currently only invoked via the context menu for the # column.

Here, if I select several item and click the copy icon (or ctrl-c, or via context menu, etc.), the copy dialog will always appear. The only exception -- as I pointed out in the other thread about copy/paste -- is when only one cell is selected. This was implemented to make it easier to just transfer some text from one cell to another without having to go through a dialog each time.

=====

@davet

Just a few observations (mostly about the screencast) :

a- once the items are selected using the # column, items aren't really deselected when right clicking on them to show the context menu. Look at the left (# column) and you'll see that the # column shows that the items are still selected. Hence, the copying will still proceed normally.

~~However, yes, this is a bit awkward to see all other columns being deselected, and it shouldn't happen.~~

That isn't true. Sorry. Thanks to Tom I noticed that copying in that case will only copy the # column's content. The bug to be corrected here is mentioned in my latest post.

b- One doesn't need to 1- create an extra item , 2- select the # colum, to paste full items in a grid. Just click anywhere and... paste. Just don't enter edit mode as I said in the other thread. How this can be made easier? not sure yet.

c- One doesn't need to use the # colum to copy/paste full (xml) items. It might help (especially for non contiguous sele, but it's not necessary. AS I pointed out at the beginning og this post, selecting any bunch of cells and pressing ctrl-c or right clicking + selecting "copy" will work too.

I'm obviously not saying everything should stay as is.

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Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 2

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU:Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

[quote=Armando]I think there's a bit of confusion in #1 -- which probably means that one UI thing or two should be modified anyway.

Armando, that's not actually true - did you look at Dave's video ? (the one I reponded to with the mantis suggestions)

or try this: -

select any number of items using the # column -
right-click in any of the item fields
click on the copy icon in the context menu - no copy dialog shows. Oddly, & I didnt report this before cause I didnt notice it - only the # field gets copied - that's possibly the problem the OP was having...

I think it's a bug

Yes, I watched the entire video. But... I forgot to test the possibility where one selects items via # and then clicks anywhere.

Thanks and... sorry.

But if you select items NOT using the # column, you'll see that you can right click anywhere in the item fields, and it'll work.

so, yes, it's a bug, I don't think it'S by design.

There is probably just 1 bug:

--> when a user right-clicks on the grid on fully selected items, the selection gets changed to the # column only. Copying then copies only the # column content (by design: when only one column or one cell is selected, no dialog appears and the content of selection is directly copied) but user wants to copy full items....

then everything else concerning the appearance of the dialog (and what's in this dialog) is a matter of UI design.

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Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 2

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU:Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

Two mantis issues reported:

1133

Select item using # column, item field context-menu-copy copies # field number + no copy dialogue

Bug

average

new

2011-06-27 11:04

tomos

1132

[UI] allow pasting an item via context menu from empty space in grid

Suggestion

minor

new

2011-06-27 10:52

tomos

edit/ just in case:

@Mark Gregory - please see other new post I made below

>The result is a series of items whose text is a number and which have an appointment set as the date and time current at the point at which the items are pasted. Not very helpful!

Not sure what you mean by that. How are you copying/pasting exactly? The copy paste problems have been discussed lately, and I wonder if you're copying the full item -- xml -- or just the selected fields.

Here I can paste items from one DB to the other one, no problem, however, those won't show in the calendar as they'd need to be set to be displayed in the calendar. And I don't think that one can select a bunch of items and check a "Show in Calendar" option. The only thing one could do -- but I might be mistaken (Pierre will say when he's back) -- is for each item to left click on the pertinent date field (appointment in your case?), hence go into "edit mode", and select the "Show in the Calendar" button.

This needs to be changed, of course, as it isn't very practical.

If you find another solution, I'd be interested to know.

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Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 2

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU:Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

Thanks again, Tom and Armando.

Tom must have been right - I can't have selected the whole of the item when I copied. With the whole row selected, copy and paste selected item as XML works - thanks!

However: I can't then follow Armando's suggestion ! If I click on the date of the appointment, click on the down arrow that appears, nothing happens and the grid freezes. The only thing that I can do is to close the grid (other grids still work). If I reopen the grid and right-click, I see no option to set ItemInCalendar. And of course I cannot set ItemInCalendar from the grid, beacuse the field is read-only. Reference is made in earlier posts to a button to set ItemInCalendar, but I can't find it...

Please, what am I doing wrong? And which bit of the documentation am I missing or needs to be updated?

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

[quote=gregory]However: I can't then follow Armando's suggestion ! If I click on the date of the appointment, click on the down arrow that appears, nothing happens and the grid freezes. The only thing that I can do is to close the grid (other grids still work). If I reopen the grid and right-click, I see no option to set ItemInCalendar. And of course I cannot set ItemInCalendar from the grid, beacuse the field is read-only. Reference is made in earlier posts to a button to set ItemInCalendar, but I can't find it... [/quote]

It does work here, for what that's worth to you...

Try this -

click F2 when the appointment field has focus - the calender month should appear immediately showing the option to show in calender

But that's the bizarre thing - I can't easily get any field beyond the item name to take focus; and pressing F2 does nothing. I think this may be a Windows 7 issue. I'll take a look around and get back to you.

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

Restarting Windows solves the problem of IQ not getting focus on a data item.

However, as Armondo has already said, having to select an item using the mouse, press F2, then use the mouse to set Show in calendar, is frustrating and error-prone. All the more so since if you don't take the Show in calendar option the first time it is presented, if you go through the same dialogue again later you don't get the Show in calendar option a second time! In that case, all you can do to get ItemInCalendar set is to edit the appointment. To get 125 items to appear in the calendar has just taken me two hours!

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

[quote=gregory]...if you don't take the Show in calendar option the first time it is presented, if you go through the same dialogue again later you don't get the Show in calendar option a second time! ...[/quote]

that sounds like another bug -

again, not happening here on XP SP3 home though

> However, as Armando has already said, having to select an item using the mouse, press F2, then use the mouse to set Show in calendar, is frustrating and error-prone.

Sounds like it might be better if the calendar popped up immediately?

Although the F2 keypress was changed recently iirc to show calendar on first press.

I think that Windows 7 changes quite a lot of things, most of them for the better, but not always!

Use of the F2 seems to be essential, but would not be so if the option to Show in calendar were in the drop-down menu for a selected date item. Speaking personally, anything which cannot be done entirely using the mouse or entirely via the keyboard always confuses me, leading to mistakes. Perhaps Pierre can take a look, but for now I've succeeded in my misii

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

[quote=gregory]

[/quote]

in another thread (Ecco data imported) Pierre explains how to add newly imported appointment items (from ecco) to the calender

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

The steps are:

View the imported items (either using the Ecco Import form or by showing items in the field EccoID)
Ensure that the Appointment field is shown in the grid
Click on a date in the Appointment field
Item >> Select all items (Alt-A)
Item >> Create event

That's it !

In v0.9.25U, the process was simplified. Steps 2 and 3 are no longer required.[/quote]