Newbie Import Question

[smold]

I'm new to Actinic and am currently trialling v7.

We are looking at a new project and are trying to import data from our
distributor that is sent to us for use in actinic.

When importing we get the following error several times but with various
line numbers:

Line 68: Incompatible information in field 1 ("Section Text"). Expected
one or more section names, each up to 50 characters long, separated by
'|', but got "3Com|Integrated Access Devices - Network Storage
Servers|Adapter or Media Converter".

From what I understand this is due to the field length being too short 50
characters.

I think the following is relevant

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...=50+characters

But it doesn’t really resolve my problem.

But I've been told the following by support (Thank you!)

"This is not possible with regards to the import file and the import file is
limited to upto 50 characters. I afraid there is no way around this."

"Also The community thread will not work, because this is only once the products are inside actinic."

Anybody have any thoughts?

Any help would be welcome.

[NormanRouxel]

The only way would be to open your import file in a text editor and replace those overlong names with shorter ones. If you only have a few lines to fix (keep them and their replacements in a reference file) then this may be acceptable. I'd also nag your supplier and tell them that their "Actinic Compatible" file isn't

I recently wrote a program for someone who had to import a suppliers datafile and I bunged in a set of automatic match and replace operations just-in-case. It turned out that this supplier was adding a manufacturers website link and some had hilarious typos so it became quite useful.

[smold]

Thanks Norman.

426 lines arent compatable

I guess I'll have to "I'd also nag them" more, they have not replied to me yet!

[NormanRouxel]

If those 406 are only a few items repeated many times then editing would be OK.

[smold]

All different!!


They seem to be all the references to the subsections!

Norman do you know if 50 characters is the limit to all fields?

Hopefully they will respond to my email by tomorrow else I'll have to use the old fashioned way all phone them!

[NormanRouxel]

No. Some fields can be enormous. Actinic is a mature product and most limits are sensible. I think you can put 20Kb into the Product Description, for example.

As for your supplier, telling them that no-one will be able to sell several hundred items may prod them enough.

[smold]

3Com|Integrated Access Devices - Network Storage
Servers|Adapter or Media Converter

I'm I right thats

.3com|
..Integrated <snip> Servers|
...Adapter or Media Converter|

Effectively subfields within fields?

I wonder if its the "Integrated Access Devices - Network Storage
Servers" part or the complete field?

[NormanRouxel]

You can have any number of 50 character fields separated by a "|" to set out your Section structure.

It's just the subfield "Integrated Access Devices - Network Storage Servers" that's too long. It's 52 characters - only 2 too big.

Do a global find and replace (I use Editpad Lite http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadclassic.html) and change all "Integrated Access Devices - Network Storage Servers" to (say) "Integrated Network Storage Servers". If you're running 2000 or XP, Notepad will do the job.