Multiple cardfile imports with custom labels

DEVONthink Tips
1

Help out a newbie please! I have a dozen .csv files where the first row contains the field names, and the remaining rows are data for the field. Using DEVONnote, I would like to be able to create a group for each file, and import the csv into multiple notes inside the group. Of course, when I add a new entry (Disks I own, Contents of my shed, the Attic, other inventories, etc), I would like a template similar to the one you get via “New from Template > Note” to be just that, a template where I can define the fields for the new box I shoved into the shed. I have struggled mightily with the template concept.

Pushing the envelope, I would like to store the date created/modified from my csv as well.

2

As only DEVONthink Pro is scriptable and supports .csv files, there’s probably no easy/automatic way to do this using DEVONnote.

3

I ended up writing several VB6 (sorry! I am migrating to the Mac painfully slowly.) programs to convert a Sidekick98 .DIF export file, one per card file, to multiple .RTF files for each contact, which also created a template to use for future notes of the particular card file format.

The programs worked by using a prototype template based on a table I created in Microsoft Word 2007 (sorry again! It was the only way I could find to get a table created where the label column was fixed, and the value column would expand and re-size to the current window in DT/DN; TextEdit and WordPad would always split evenly.)

The structure of the resultant .RTF file is pretty easy to code around and make substitutions using the Tuple data in the .DIF file. It would match up the labels with the prototype and remove the extra rows, entering no data for the .RTF of the template, and the data value for the actual contact record. The note name was based on the first few fields of the contact.

So, I now have all my Sidekick98 contacts into DT/DN. I should be able to create new card files by massaging the prototype template for any new structure.

(I even have a program to rearrange the table rows, altering the file/note name if I decide to. Hope I don’t have to use that again. I had made too many changes to data after the initial setup, to re-run an export, so I had to read all the DN/DT card file notes I had made, and massage stuff.)

Exporting memos from Sidekick98 involved breaking the single .RTF file into multiple notes for each memo in the file, creating a folder structure based on the exported file name.

For those who are still with me, I was not able to figure out how to get the Sidekick98 Contact Log exported, so I had a lot of copy/paste to do. Also, if a contact contained a hard line-feed, the remainder of that field did not get exported. Tried all kinds of exports, no luck.

I need a good method to back up only the changed memos outside of Time Machine. Concerned about disk space, and my seemingly never-ending problems with Time Machine.