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Preparing the Data for Restructuring
Continued from Examining the Address Book Data: The First Changes
The next step was to take this data and reformat it. I knew that I needed to end with a CSV data file (a text file with commas between the data values — comma-separated-values) for importing into the webmail program. But, unfortunately, I did not know how the data was supposed to be formatted.
The program that I know can import regular text files and can easily turn them into CSV files in Microsoft Excel. So, I started Excel and told it to open the text file. It promptly let tell Excel how to break the data into columns...
(click on the image for a larger version)
My first step was to load the "one record - one line" data file into Microsoft Excel. Excel will load text files and automatically separate them into separate columns in Excel. It will try to use Tab characters to distinguish between fields.
(click on the image for a larger version)
We need to put a checkmark in the Space checkbox, so it uses spaces as delimiters. When we do this, the same dialog box will show the reformatted data, as it will be interpreted by Excel.
(click on the image for a larger version)
It still looks good, so we tell Excel to Finish — to actually load the text file into Excel.
(click on the image for a larger version)
We've got a few steps to go: exporting a starting CSV file, importing it into the webmail program to start figuring out the file format (where the program is getting its values from the file) for the webmail program's import, and modifying the CSV to put the right data in the right places. And, of course, importing the final CSV file into the webmail program so that we have our address book entries available there.
Continued in Creating the Addressbook CSV File and Importing it into Webmail
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Copyright © 2006-2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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