home
Product
Support

Technical Educational Professional 3rd Party Contact Us

Support Policy Services Knowledgebase HMM FAQs Repair Search Feature Requests Bug Reports FTP
Everything Else...
Import & Export
What does "Export" mean?

An export (formerly referred to as a "dump") simply outputs all the data in a view to a file in ASCII text format. The data is not deleted from the Collection. It is 'copied' to a text file.
What does "Import" mean? An import (formerly referred to as a "load") reads the data in an ASCII file and enters it in a Helix View. The data is entered as though you had typed it into the View screen and entered each record.
Can I import data from a spreadsheet, such as Microsoft® Excel"? Yes. Save your spreadsheet as tab delimited ASCII text. Make sure the order of fields in your text file is the same as the order of fields in your form.
Can I change the Field and record delimiters? Yes. In the import/export dialog box there is a button labeled "Options." Selecting that button will display a dialog box that lets you set the delimiters.
I am having trouble loading a text file that came from a Windows (or Unix) system. Any ideas? Chances are the file is using CRLF as the record delimiter.

Macintosh computers use a single character (usually CR, or ASCII 13) as a record delimiter. PCs use two characters, CR followed by LF (ASCII 10).

The best solution is to first open the collection in a program (such as BBEdit) that can automatically strip the LF characters out. You can also tell Helix that the LF character is the record delimter (in the Import options dialog) but then you must remember that the last character in the last field of each record will also have a CR appended to it.
I'm trying to load a text file but I keep getting errors. Any ideas? Data is validated on import to make sure it is the right data type for the Field. If the data is the wrong type (i.e., trying to import text into a number Field) Helix will report an error.

Validations that are attached to Fields are also checked during import. During import, three (3) options are available if an error is detected: Stop Import, Ignore Field, or Ignore Record. If you are uncertain if a file will import properly, start with the option set to stop on error, and when the import stops, examine the last record entered. To do this, open the file in a text editor or word processor, locate that line in the file, and look at the next line. You should find the problem there.

If the problem is not evident, try copying the line, switching to Helix and using "Paste Record" to attempt to load the line by itself. By repeating this with less and less data, you should be able to determine exactly where the error is.
Can I import and export pictures? Pictures can not be exported from a collection, but there is an alternative. If you previously saved the pictures as PICT documents, you can use an inert document field in conjunction with a picture tile to post the picture from the document into the picture field. Alternatively, you can simply store the documents in the Collection (internally or externally) and use a picture tile to view the picture.