I’m converting over to a new Mac Powerbook, and need something to replace InfoSelect. I see it’s mentioned in some user testimonials, but I can’t see it explicitly listed in as a “known format” for import, even in the comparison charts.
Assuming that someone before me has needed to do the same import, how is the easiest way to accomplish it?
OK guys, I’ve got the new PowerBook and I’ve got the trial version of DevonThink…
InfoSelect will let me export items as either text or RTF format, but as near as I can tell DevonThink won’t recognize the “break points” between individual items which are contained within a larger document.
DevonThink help files are not particularly helpful in this regard either. So, does someone, anyone have a clue if this is possible with the Import functionality?
Hi,
it seems that nobody has experience with your software. So why don’t you just try importing one of the RTF-documents?
As for the breakpoints: Perhaps you can add a weird combination of characters at any place while you are still in InfoSelect (I use “ßß” quite often) and later divide the RTF documents with AppleSript? – Just an idea, did not try that yet, but I would be quite interested in such a script myself, all plans for the summer holidays… 
Best,
Maria
Maria,
I did try importing the RTF (and the text) versions, but all I end up with is a 10,000+ page single document. What I should have is 10,000+ single items/individual notes. I don’t think I can set an item/note delimiter in the export from InfoSelect, certainly not in the text option. I’ll have to investigate the RTF options and see if there is something there. Rather disappointing that no one seems to understand this, since it’s mentioned in the “new user” comments on the web site.
Cheers,
Randall
As far as I understand now, this is a problem of InfoSelect, not of DevonThink, and this seems to be why nobody understands your problem.
If you can export multiple RTF documents from your InfoSelect database (each data set is one RTF document), then you can import these to DevonThink, and you will have as many different data sets as you had in InfoSelect.
But if InfoSelect exports the data base as one large text or RTF File, DevonThink imports one large RTF File. That’s how it works.
Try to get all data sets out of InfoSelect as different files – for this you should ask on their forum – and you will have no problem importing that stuff in reasonable sizes.
btw, I there is no way of getting several RTF-documents from info select, you have several choices to create different documents from the large one: AppleScript for text and RTF, or if you can export as .tsv import into the tables of DT Pro (yes, it is beta, but anybody can apply for getting a beta), or XML transformations if you can export as XML.
Hope this helps?
Maria
I’m not allocating blame here with any product, just looking for a solution!
As far as any exports to RTF, it looks like my only options are to separate the topic headers and body text with either tabs, or a fixed “point/size” indent. Doesn’t look like there are any options to separate topics with special characters, and then use scripting to import into DevonThink breaking one large document down into individual items.
agreed, and I was trying to help you finding a solution. One step to the solution is to look for where the problem is. 
That sounds bad, and the only solution I see is to ask InfoSelect how to separate the topics. One guess: Can you export individual topics to text or RTF? So you could write a script that exports individual data sets as individual files.
Maria
Maria,
We may actually have made some progress with this now. I think there is some kind of a bug in InfoSelect v7, which was preventing the export to HTML from working properly (may relate to nested topics or something along those lines).
Anyway, the end result from the past 4 days of experimenting, is that I know have what looks to be proper HTML files for the entire IS database.
As soon as I get a chance later tonight, I can now try importing those folders/ html files into Devon Think and see how it works. If it goes well, it’s the last remaining item of any significance on my “switch” to the Mac.
(FWIW, importing about 10 years of e-mail was another story as well, but eventually resolved)