Roll Your Own - Using Your Own Data

You want to create a TCB database from your own data. With most programs, like Outlook, Word, Excel, etc., you can usually "export" the data you want to a .csv (comma separated) file or .dbf (dBase) file.

If you are exporting your data  to a .csv file, first remove all commas, and single quotes from the data you want to export. Export your data to a file.  Check the file with Notepad.  See if the file is all run together, i.e., there should be one line for each record, if not, it is run together.

If it is run together, load the ,csv file into a word processor that will save straight ANSI files, i.e, each line or record terminated with a carriage return/Line feed character pair, and save it again. I use a >30 year old DOS program called "ed.exe" quite frequently to "correct" files that are terminated with only a carriage return (chr(10)) character instead of the carriage return/line feed pair.  This is true of some .html and text files created on other OSes such as UNIX or Linux.

Check it with Notepad again.  If its OK, make sure there is are field names (column labels), for each field (column) in the first row of the file separated by commas. If the name  line doesn't exist, insert the column labels you want with a comma separating each name.  Save the file.

Now take your .dbf or .csv data file and "drag & drop" it onto the conversion utility, "TCBdbCnv.exe."  In about 3-5 seconds four or five files will appear in the folder from whence you dragged your data file from. A few seconds later, 3 files will be left.  Delete the .rpt file. TCB Pro and another version of the conversion utility make use of this file.

The .db3 file is a SQLite database file containing your data. The .sql file is a SQL snapshot of your entire recordset.  It can be used to copy your recordset into another SQL dataset (SQLite database file) that already exists. 














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