Delimited Text files (Excel, Access, Outlook, etc.)

Many applications including Excel and Access, can export data as text files. Two most common formats are:
  • Comma separated values, or CSV
  • Tab-delimited
InfoQube can import these formats. To import, do File > Import from > Non-Hierarchical Data
 
In this sample, we'll import an IQ language file. The easiest way to nicely view this data, is to create a new grid:
  1. View > Grids > New grid
  2. We'll give it the name IQStrings
  3. Click OK.
  4. The new grid is created and opened
  5. A new yes/no field, called IQStrings, is also created, to hold the data we'll enter in this grid 
     

Import Step 1: Select / edit the data

Click on File > Import from > Non-Hierarchical Data to bring up the import dialog box.

 

 
In step 1:
  1. Click on Open File and select a file (no file size limit), or
  2. Paste the content to import in the text area (max file size=64kB)
  3. Select the delimiter (normally "," for CSV) or check Tab for Tab-delimited
  4. Check as to whether the first line contains the field names or not
  5. You can examine the file content and do minor edits if required
  6. Click on "Next"
     

Import Step 2: Field Mapping

 
In step 2, the dialog is divided into 2 sections;
  • In the top section, a grid shows the data after it has been parsed. You can scroll to ensure it was done correctly. If now, click the Back button to return to step 1
  • In the bottom section, you determine the field parsing (between the data to import and the current database)
 To do step 2, you:
  1. First check in the top section, that the file parsing was done correctly
  2. If the first line contains the field names, these  will be shown in the bottom section, if not, these will be given numbers (matching those of the top section)
  3. For each field that you want imported, select (in the second column) the appropriate IQ Field
    1. If the IQ Field does not exist, you can create it. Since the import dialog is not modal, you can do Tools > Manage Fields and create your fields
    2. Click Refresh Field List if new fields were added
  4. You can also set fixed values (not in the original import file), to help categorize the new data. In this example, 2 IQ Fields were set
    1. Language was set to En (as these strings were in that language)
    2. IQStrings was set to -1. IQStrings is the yes/no field related to the grid we created earlier. To set it, assign it the value -1. That way, the IQStrings grid will display the imported data
  5. You can save this field mapping to a file, load an existing field mapping file
  6. You can also select which records to import (you may want to first do a test with a few records, or import them by batches of 100, etc)
  7. Click Next
     

Import Step 3: Import

 
Step 3 is the final step:
  1. You'll see a preview of the data to import and into which IQ Field.
  2. Click Import to complete the process or Back to return to a previous step.
  3. The staus bar will show the import progress and a dialog will tell you the number of imported items
  4. Click Close
You can now open your IQStrings grid and add the imported fields:
 
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