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76 Chapter 8 Importing, Exporting, and Printing
Exporting CSV Files from Other Applications
For the best results when importing information into Bento, follow these guidelines:
1 Export your data from the other application as a CSV file. If you have multiple
worksheets in a single spreadsheet file or multiple tables in a database, export each
one into a separate CSV file.
1 If your CSV file contains multiple tables because you are unable to export individual
tables, then split the file into separate CSV files, creating one file for each table.
1 Note whether your CSV file contains a row with the column names. Bento can use
the values in that row as field names when you import the information into a new
library. In Bento, these field names appear as labels in form view and as column
names in table view.
1 Make a note of the order of the fields in the CSV file. If the file doesnt contain a row
with the column names, you can refer to your notes to manually name the fields
when you import the file.
1 If your application is not able to export information in the CSV file format, check
whether it can export a tab-delimited file instead. Create the tab-delimited file, and
then import the tab-delimited file into an application that can create a CSV file,
such as Microsoft Excel, FileMaker Pro, or Numbers. Or use a text editor to replace
the tab characters in the tab-delimited file with commas.
Correcting CSV Files
In the following cases, you may want to correct the data in the CSV file:
1 Put double quotation marks around field values that have embedded commas.
For example: “10,000 Donors“
1 Put double quotation marks around field values with leading or trailing spaces.
1 Put double quotation marks around field values that contain embedded line-
breaks.