InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by J-Mac on 2008/11/19 02:30

I know that there must be a number of methods to import/enter data into IQ, but I can't seem to find them shown in one place. Heck, I can't even find many of them period! As an example, another Information Collection/Database application that I use allows drag-and-drop of entire folders from Windows Explorer - or in my case, Directory Opus. If you drag while holding the right-mouse button down it behaves just like Explorer. When the dragged folder is over the folder or pane where you want to put it, as soon as you let up on the button you get a dialog asking if you want to move the folder there, copy it there, or link to it from there. The link is nice because you can have it update/sync the contents regularly.

Does IQ allow this for folders from Explorer? from Outlook?

Currently the only ways I get data into IQ is by entering it directly or clipping from the web. I would like to get other data into IQ but I need to know what the available methods are, as well as what the effective methods are.

Thanks!

Jim

Comments

Jim,

I'm not to well up on import in general but with linking files and folders it's a doddle -

Simply drag n drop file or folder to grid - a new item is created which links to that folder or file

Single click opens the file, or, opens folder in your default file manager - you can then edit the link text if you want - see the links page in the wiki - (dont know has it been moved here yet)

With links, I presume if the file is moved the link is no good anymore

I have all my working files in IQ - so if I want to rearrange them I just do that in IQ

I'm not sure about embedding files in the database -

I know you can use "relative links" so filepath is kept in relation to the SQLNotes exe file and if you move files and exe to say a different drive the links will still work. This is not automated though and I'm no expert - there is a thread about it somewhere in old forum

Also dont know about Outlook

EDIT:

Format for File links or Folder links is <a href=xxx>Link Text</a>
where xxx is the file/folder path

So, if you edit a linked file in IQ you will see <a href=xxx>Link Text</a>

you can change "Link Text" to whatever you want - it will by default be the file/folder name

I asked many questions about linking under the tread hyperlink in the old Forum -- you can check it out. You have clisk hyperlink icon to open a window to create various links, you can drag it, you can use HTML tags. If you meant importing data from other databases that's another story. As far as the HTML hyperlinks go, I think they are not working yet, but I'm not sure. Are they, Pierre? I hope this subject will be eventaually included in documantation in a thorough and systematic way. Although I see here more than one subject, actually: hyperlinking, importing & synchronizing are three big ones.

Take care,

Jay

[quote=Tom]

I know you can use "relative links" so filepath is kept in relation to the SQLNotes exe file and if you move files and exe to say a different drive the links will still work.

[/quote]

Correction... links are relative to the IQBase file

I've started adding content on importing here: 5. Importing.

Thank you all for your comments on linking to external files. However that doesn’t address importing data at all. Pierre, I appreciate the article about importing text files - that was informative, though actually it addresses importing csv/tsv files. E.g., importing a plain text file - not data that needs to be parsed as to where column breaks are, etc. - shouldn’t need any filed mapping, correct?

Plus, I didn't see anything on drag and drop except for linking. So am I to understand that I cannot drag and drop any content into IQ? (No linking - I am not talking about linking here).

Generally it doesn’t appear to be easy to get data from other places into IQ. I sure hope that this is planned. Otherwise I will not be getting much of my data into IQ. As for exporting data to CSV and then bringing it in via import and field mapping, that certainly is an old, tried and true method. Just not that efficient; nor is it very quick for moving data from other applications.

Thank you.

Jim

> Thank you all for your comments on linking to external files. However that doesn’t address importing data at all.

Your first post Jim was half about importing data, half about importing folders -

you got responses about the half that we (me & Jay) knew about !!

What do you want to import ?
What do you want to import from ? (you did mention outlook - maybe you could give more details there)
How would you like to be able to import ?

e.g. do you want to be able to drag-drop text from another app into the html pane - or into item field - or both?
etc,

Me, I'd like to see easy import of email + details from Thunderbird - I believe this has been discussed somewhere?

Hi Jim,

I'm kind of in a hurry here but ("completing" Tom's questions -- not that they needed to! ;) ) here are some thoughts... and a question...

Apart from content from other PIM or smaller scale database (like EverNote -- which IQ can import fairly easily) why do you want to get files (I assume : documents, etc.) into IQ? I lknow that there can be some advantages to this (like : being able to take your life with you on a single file)... but I'm curious about your needs.

Pierre might have changed his mind, but It's never been IQ's philosophy to import everything into its data base (unlike, say, Ultra Recall, myBase, or whatever...) -- and I like it. Why ? Simply because importing "everything" causes several problems : loss of format particularities, database becomeing insanely big, backuping can become challenging, etc. So, since the OS file system is already what you could call a "meta database", it can be used as an extension of IQ's (or any software's) database (and if one needs portability , it's simple enough to take a little 2.5 HD with all the files). Of course, there are things to be done to achieve this : like "unbreakable" links between files and the database (à la tag2find), which ntfs can achieve pretty well... It's somewhere in Mantis, and should be one of IQ's features... in the future.

> why do you want to get files (I assume : documents, etc.) into IQ? I lknow that there can be some advantages to this (like : being able to take your life with you on a single file)... but I'm curious about your needs.

ehh...you must have misread something there Jim - I dont - I mean I dont want to embed anything into the IQ file -well maybe some email "conversations"- but otherwise I link files.

I was trying to figure out what exactly you wanted to do - lol

Tom : it was me : Armando (not Jim)... who was talking to... Jim.

> Tom : it was me : Armando (not Jim)... who was talking to... Jim.

Oh dear

Big Oups a lá or something linke that!! Apologies to all for confusing things - I was very confused by your post Armando thinking it was Jim's LOL

LOL! (Laughing about the discourse between you and Tom, Armando!)

Armando, when I mentioned "...another Information Collection/Database application...) in my first post, I was pretty much thinking of Ultra Recall. As you probably know I purchased that a few months ago and was trying to become proficient in that program as well as IQ. Also as you kind of mention in this post, Ultra Recall and IQ do have somewhat different features. You have no doubt heard that Kinook posted recently that they are no longer going to develop Ultra Recall. (Though that post was subsequently removed, I believe that any further development will be very minimal).

Anyway, since that announcement was made I figured that I might as well try to find out if IQ can handle all that I have been doing with Ultra Recall. It's certainly not a "requirement" of mine that IQ do all that or I can't use it; nothing like that. Just wondering if I could eliminate my use of UR by doing all with IQ!

Regarding the data that I would drag into IQ, Outlook or Thunderbird email folders are one example. Not ALL my email, but in UR I dragged special folders I had set up in Outlook that contain very specific email exchanges dealing with a critical topic. I need to have those with all the time, and Outlook had never been what I would call "reliable" with my data. I have several backups of my Outlook PST mainly because those damn PST databases get corrupted too easily. Having my very important email folders (separate folders for specific subjects/projects) in UR and/or IQ assures me to a degree that they are available and accessible wherever I am, and that they are safe from an Outlook PST corruption.

For certain projects of mine I also like having folders containing Office docs (primarily Word and Excel files) and PDF files kept in UR for the same reason. It's like being able to carry a tiny filing cabinet of all documents associated with my critical projects with me at all times, both on a USB Flash drive and I also keep copies of my UR and IQ database files on an online server so I can hopefully access them from anywhere.

If that's not sonething that IQ has plans to be able to do, it's not a big deal; I still can use UR as it is, and I don’t mind much having the data I need in two separate formats, accessible only with two applications. But I wanted to know if it were possible to do it all with one. Actually I probably can, but not with the one that I prefer.

The concept of "unbreakable" links you mentioned does sound nice, but I (or any user) would then need to always have that data available wherever they happen to be, which is not usually feasible.

Thanks!

Jim

maybe the relative links could be a solution for you Jim regards wanting to keep some files "in" IQ file

You would have to keep your documents in a folder relatively closely related to your IQ folder and yould could then copy/backup files with IQ database file

Here are some quotes from other forum:

>what are the paths made relative to? The SQLN database ?

Correct

>What is the advantage of changing the path - does this mean you can move the files without changing the link?

If you move both the SQLNotes file and the linked files, the links will still work (that's the idea behind relative links). To really work well however, the linked files must be under the SQLNotes file. If they are like ..\otherfolder\myfile.txt, then you'll need to move otherfolder too.

HOW TO:

Drag-drop onto the grid, which will create a new item and edit the FilePath field or enter the relative path in the URL field.

To do this for many files in the same folder:

Drag-drop the files
Select them
In the Properties pane, change the FilePath to the relative path
A prompt will warn you that the changes will be done on multiple items. Click Yes

some more info, eg from webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/index.cfm

A few examples using D:\Data\Shapefiles\Landuse as the current directory are

..               (D:\Data\Shapefiles)
..\..            (D:\Data)
..\..\Final      (D:\Data\Final)
.                (D:\Data\Shapefiles\Landuse - the current directory)
.\..\Soils       (D:\Data\Final\Soils)
..\..\.\Final\..\Shapefiles\.\Landuse  (D:\Data\Shapefiles\Landuse)

hey tom, maybe you could copy and paste this into the glossary if it's not therer yet (under relative links... maybe).... If you want... Or I'll do i t later.

I've added Tom's examples to this new page: Link to Files, Folders and URLs

nice.

In ADM & Ariadne, user could point at a HD directory & "register" all files / folders into the db; i.e. the content was not entered but all the links were automatically created as items. Example, if you keep all your correspondence in my documents | correspondence, you could register the files in that folder or... just the folder. I have found linking to HD files from within my PIM very useful. Unfortunately, these links were never dynamic but as long as user didn't move them it was convenient.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

Do you know Jan that you can link folders (in the same way as files - drag into IQ) ?

To link all contents of a folder you would have to select all the files and drag into IQ

I've done this with multiple files without problems

Yes, Tom, I knew that. I was just pointing out that the process was automated in ADM & Ariadne via dialogs & options, i.e. folder, folder w files, etc.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1