Subtitles of the Movie

So let's go ahead and work with this data and import some more information so we have something to see. So to do that, you go to the File menu, and you choose Import Records. Now we're not going to go over XML or ODBC, that's beyond the scope of this tutorial, but I will explain Digital Camera, which is on the Mac only. You can actually import directly from your digital camera into a container field. So you can take all those photos and put them on records inside of a container field. You also have the ability to import everything from a single folder if you want. But they type of import you're going to use almost 100% of the time is going to importing from a single file. So that's what we're going to do here and show you how to work with. So we'll choose that, and it asks you to locate a file. Now, there are many types of files you can import, and you can see them down here. Right now it says All Available, meaning that FileMaker will figure out what type of file to import when you choose it, and then it will allow you to import any type of file that's available. But you can also specify specifically what type of FileMaker file you want or tab-separated file you want. Any type of file can be specified and the other types will be dimmed, and so usually most people leave it on All Available and FileMaker will figure it out, but if you want to make sure, and sometimes, you know, it doesn't figure out things perfectly, well you can go down and specify exactly which one you want. Now, let's go over a little bit some of these file types. Of course, FileMaker can import data from another FileMaker file. Tab-separated is a very common file format that has tabs between each distinct field data. Comma-separated, another common type which has commas between each field. Silk, well that is a spreadsheet type of export. And you can go down and look at these different file types here, but for right now, you're probably most common is going to be FileMaker Pro or tab-separated text. Now I just happen to have a FileMaker file, so I'm going to choose that. Now, I could have left it on All Available, it would have been fine, but I'm going to choose it, and then we're going to choose Names. That's where we have 40 or so names that we're going to import directly into our Contacts database. So we'll click Open, and you'll see now at the top, you want to read this dialog from the left to right, and top to bottom. So the source is Names, and that's the file we chose. So on this side of the column here, these are all the fields from names. Over here, these are all the fields in your database. Now, we only have one table, so we don't have to worry about that. We could actually import into a brand new table and even call it the same as that. But I actually wanted to go into my Contacts table. OK, so all we have to do is say, figure out what our source is, what our target is because we might have more than one table and we might want to change the target. But typically you import into the table that your'e showing on the current layout. And you'll get more how this works later on, how tables, and layouts, and records, and fields all work together. But for right now, you just want to make sure that when you import, you're looking at the data you want on the layout, that the source is correct and the target's correct. And then all you have to do is line up your fields. Now you'll notice that not all of them are lined up. City and Address aren't lined up. Now if I want City to be up here, I can simply use one of these little gizmos here and move it up. Now you'll see once I move it at first it says City in both places, but as soon as I let go, it swaps those two fields. And so I can go through and try to match up all these fields if I wanted to and it wouldn't be too hard because there's not that many, but you also have options over here that will make it easier for you: Match up by Field Types, Last Order, Creation Order, I like Matching Names. And if we choose Matching Names here, address matches with address, city with city, state with state, phone with phone, but some of the fields don't match up because they're not exactly the same spelling. It does put them next to each other, but we have to click that arrow so that we make sure that it actually imports into that field. Just because they're lined up doesn't mean they're going to import, so we'll click that arrow, and then click that. And now we don't have an Email field over here, so we don't have to match it up with something, and we don't have a Full Name field or a Customer ID field over here, so we don't have to match that up. So once you've done that and you've scrolled through all these fields, and you see the date of birth is down here. Once you have every field matched up on this side to one on this side, then you're ready to go. Then you want to look at the actions over here. Now, 99% of the time, you're going to be adding new records. You can update existing records in a found set or update matching records in a found set, but we're not going to go over those right now because the most common choice is Add New Records. And that's all we have to do. You do have these little icons right here, which are kind of nice, you can actually click Forward, and instead of looking at the field name, you can actually look at the data. And that's kind of nice because sometimes your import file, your source isn't a FileMaker file and it doesn't actually have field names, so that can really help you out and in fact, it'll tell you how many records you have, we're going to import 41 records. So let's go ahead and do the import, we're going to click it right now. And you come up with this dialog. This is your import options. Now, if you read this, you'll notice that we do have Auto-enters that we want to occur. Remember, we're not importing into these fields, so they're going to be blank, and if we want them to have Auto-enter information, well we need to check this so it occurs on import, otherwise they'll be completely blank. Now this area is dead and you don't have to worry about it, but it has to do with repeating fields and how you can split them, and we probably wont' go over this, it's very unimportant now that you have relational databases. It's really most important when you're going from a flat file to a relational database, but if you do need to do that, you can look into this feature. So we'll click Import, it gives you a summary, 41 records, no errors, that's really the most important one there, click OK, and you can see that we now have 43 records total: the two that we entered, plus the 41 that we imported. And it's also important to note that there's a found set of 41 records now. We're going to go over those later and how to create them, but after you import, remember that all those records are in a found set because you may want to actually modify those records in some way afterwards, and it's good that they're in a found set because you can manipulate them altogether. But if we look through this, we can see all these records in here. Now we have a lot of information to work with. So now you're ready to go ahead and go onto the next step, which is working with your records.