62 Type the letter U and hit the [ENTER] key. At this point the program will begin the import process and display the number of records it has processed on the screen. You may also see some error messages flash by as the process continues. These may or may not be relevant, as many of the error messages you encounter are generated as a result of the Univers program’s “preference,” or pre-disposition to utilize the older fixed-length file scheme rather than the more widely-used comma-delimited file scheme, as mentioned earlier. After the file has run it’s course, Univers will ask if you want to create any records that it has not found. ALWAYS ANSWER NO. The program will then ask you if you would like to save the unprocessed records to a file. You may want to do this the first few times you run imports, until you get a feel for what is going on. This file (and ALL files that are created by Univers) may be found in the default working directory for the workstation in use, typically C:\UNIVERS, or C:\USER. It may also ask if you would like to print an error report, which is a good idea while you are learning to use this feature. When all these choices have been answered, the program will return to the Import Table Menu screen. You may exit the Import module by moving the highlight over to the word QUIT and then hitting the [ENTER] key. You should next open one of the affected records from within the Data Maintenance screen and examine the effects of your import procedure. As stated earlier, it is always a good idea to open up your delimited data file using a text-editor program (such as the Windows® Notepad® or WordPad® programs) , and examine it for integrity (such as: the proper number of fields; the absence of stray delimiters, or extra quote marks). While you are learning to use this procedure, it is also a good idea to isolate one single line of data from your delimited file and save it as a separate file. You may then import the data into a single record to observe the accuracy of your results. Remember: It is much easier to manually correct a single record and then re-structure your import process than it is to fix several hundred or perhaps several thousand records that were corrupted due to an improperly structured import table or delimited file. |