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It is a (sad) fact of computing
that very few address book systems are compatible with each other,
and most store the data they hold in very different, and often
incompatible and undocumented formats.
NetCFax is probably no different
in that we store our address book data in our own format, at least
when it is in use, so to save you the drudgery of re-typing
several hundreds (or more) of these in to your new NetCFax system,
we have provided a flexible import method that uses the industry
standard CSV data format (This stands for Comma Separated
Values).
In exactly the same way as
NetCFax, virtually all decent software systems provide an
option to allow you to export this type of data out to your hard
disk as a CSV file, including both Outlook and Outlook Express.
The data format of the
information in a CSV file is very simple really, it comprises of a
first line in the file that lists the "name" of each
field, which is just something that it is felt is recognizable to
us human beings. Each entry on this line is separated from
the next by a comma (hence the name Comma Separated Values), and
this line (alone) usually DOES NOT have quotes around each of the
field names.
The balance of the CSV file is
where the actual address book data is found, and this is again
formatted as one address record per line, with each field being
enclosed in quote marks and also separated from the next by a
comma. eg:
"123 345 67879",
"John Doe", "my Company", .................
If the system that holds your
address book data can export data in this format, which is pretty
likely, all you need to do is to export that address book, then
start NetCFax, go the Address Book menu, and select the
"Import addresses from CSV file" option.
A window is displayed to let you
select the CSV file, and when our import window opens, all of the
field names mentioned above will be listed in the left hand
list. The center list will be empty initially, and the right
hand list contains all the field names we use to identify the
different fields we store (The fields you need to "MAP"
your own field names to).
By using the Add or Remove
buttons, you simply highlight a field name from the left hand list
(the exported data) and then add it to the center list so that the
data type it contains (the fax number or name etc) matches our own
field type. This is called MAPPING the data.
If you find that your exported
data does not have any data field that matches (maps) to any field
of our own field names list, just use the <EMPTY> entry to
pad the list out.
Most people find that the field
names used are pretty self explanatory.
When you are ready, just click
the required Import button at the bottom, and NetCFax will import
all of the data (from the fields you have mapped to ours) in the
exported file into it's own address book system for you.
IMPORTANT NOTE - If you
have NetCFax 2.70 or NetCFax Pro 3.10 and have discovered that the
overwrite option when importing address book data actually appends
all of the entries, this anomaly has been corrected in 2.71 and
3.11.
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NETCFAX -
Networked fax system