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Import from FileMaker repeating fields

Just starting out with Ninox, with a view to transferring several databases at home from FileMaker Pro ($900 a year to upgrade from v.11 to 16? No thanks!). I have a general grasp of exporting from FMP to a csv and importing that into Ninox, but that only seems to be possible at a pretty basic level and doesn't help much with things like FMP's repeating fields.

Example: in a database of movies, I have a field for Languages. For this I have a repeating field which allows me up to 8 languages for any given movie. For each repetition there's a popup menu in my data entry layout, showing the contents of a value list (a huge number of languages, btw!) which I can easily edit at any time. But...

I can't work out the best way to handle this in Ninox. Should I transfer the value list as a separate table, which I then link to in the main table? If so, how do I transfer the information about which movie is in which language(s)? Should I include the repeating field as a temporary field in the csv, which I can then manipulate by scripting? (For what it's worth, FMP uses the character 0x1D - ASCII 29 - to separate the repetitions when it exports, but that's easy to replace with something simple like '\' or '^' in a text editor.)

Or do I use a subtable? I haven’t quite got my head round these concepts sufficiently yet, so any help is gratefully received!

I'm sure other issues will arise too, but that's a good start.

Oh, and I've found a way to extract the contents of image fields from FMP (they can't be exported into a csv for fairly obvious reasons). So importing those images into Ninox will be another interesting challenge, but that can wait for now...

1 reply

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    • chris.5
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    The problem of the repeating fields is now solved - at least, as far as storing them in Ninox is concerned. The answer is indeed a separate table of Languages, with a third table to create an M:N relationship. That works beautifully as far as it goes, but I'm still unsure about getting the data in from FMP via a CSV. Working on it...

Content aside

  • 5 yrs agoLast active
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