Importing text-file: characters are troubling???

OBADE · October 31, 2017, 02:51:17 AM

1. I bought my copy of Setlistmaker.
2. Have put all my longtime treasured, Yellow-aged papersheets from my multomap into a Excel spreadsheet, following narrowly the instructions from this site.
3. Write the sheet into a textfile.
4. Put the .txt into my Google Drive (working on my Windows Laptop).
5. Got my Ipad and opened Google Drive.
6. Engaged the option "open file in Setlistmaker".
5. Opened up Setlistmaker on my Ipad.
6. Opened a database and choose the option "import from textfile"
7. Got the Error-message that file couldn't be openenen because of non-conforming characters (or other words like that...)
8. Disgraced Adèle by spelling her name without the "Accent Grave" and redo the whole charade.
9. Ending up with the same Error.

What did i do wrong?

Greetings Peter form Holland.

arlo · October 31, 2017, 08:03:53 AM

Please be sure to save the file with UTF encoding when you export it from Excel. That should fix it.

OBADE · October 31, 2017, 08:41:51 AM

No, that didn't work either. But i'm afraid that there might be some earlier version of importSong.txt somewhere in the crypts of Setlistmaker. How can i get some kind of list of all the imported files in setlistmaker using my Ipad (so not by using ITunes)?

arlo · October 31, 2017, 11:09:10 AM

You can look at the Documents page in Set List Maker, and the import file should appear there, and you can view it or delete it from there.

OBADE · October 31, 2017, 12:55:42 PM

Oké, i deleted everything and imported the textfile (which i saved with UTF encoding) once more. I imported it in setlistmaker, but loading songs from it gave the same error-message.

Can it be that i have to delete manually those non-text characters? But which are those?

arlo · October 31, 2017, 01:16:17 PM

Can you post your file and I'll try it? Or start a help ticket if you don't want to post it publicly:

https://helpdesk.arlomedia.com/arlomedia

OBADE · October 31, 2017, 01:50:34 PM

here are the xls and the txt-file I made from it.

OBADE · October 31, 2017, 02:34:29 PM

Hey Arlo,

Yes, this one i can load songs from. thanks.
But i wonder what i did wrong. In excel I choose "save as text (tab is separator)", next I choose as extra the weboption for coding the UTF-8 and pushed OK.
What did I miss?

arlo · October 31, 2017, 03:22:17 PM

I don't know -- it sounds like your version of Excel is different from mine. In my version, I choose File > Save As..., then set the Format to UTF-16 Unicode Text. (It really should be UTF-8, but that's not an option in my Excel version and the UTF-16 files have always worked for me.)

On my Mac, I can also use BBEdit to change the encoding of an existing file. On Windows, I've read that Notepad++ can do this.

OBADE · October 31, 2017, 04:11:48 PM

Now i'm confused. You pick the unicode UTF-16 (or

in de "Save As"-box? (where you you can choose the type of file; xls, doc, csv, pdf, etc., and also txt)?
I thought that you have to go also to the box Extra->Weboptions->coding, and there you can select "Unicode UTF-8"? is that not correct?

arlo · October 31, 2017, 06:28:41 PM

I'm sure the commands are different in different versions of Excel. At that point it's really an Excel issue and I'm not an expert on that.

OBADE · November 01, 2017, 02:32:58 AM

Oke, i'll figure that out (i hope $:-\$ )
One last question, there are many kinds of .txt types you can choose from. Does it matter which?
I've tried all kinds of .txt types from the "Save as"-box and tried every Unicode coding-option (plane Unicode, Unicode (Big Endian), Unicode (UTF-8)) from my Excel 2010 and all lead to the same error in Setlistmaker (502).

Anyone else who encountered this problem? I'm willing to do some own investigations but i'm out of options now.

OBADE · November 01, 2017, 07:02:44 AM

I guess that Excel won't give me relief. So I'm planning to do it the manual way.
Just preventing the characters that gives Setlistmaker the Hickups.

But which characters are those? Question marks, Asteriks, quotes, I guess, but which more? The Backslash not for sure because it has special meaning for Setlistmaker.

I'd love to have some list of no-go characters. Thanks in advance.

arlo · November 01, 2017, 09:14:58 AM

If it says UTF-8, I don't know why that wouldn't work. You could send me another of the files to check ... you can use the same help desk ticket you started yesterday. Even if Excel won't export as UTF, can you use BBEdit or Notepad++ to convert the file afterwards?

Question marks, asterisks and straight quotes are fine, but curly or "smart" quotes and accent marks would be a problem. You might also have some hidden characters in there, so it can be pretty hard to remove them all manually.

OBADE · November 02, 2017, 06:01:24 AM

Hi Arlo,

that was the trick; just open the .txt in some basic tekst-editor, save and go for it. Thank you very much for your persistence.

Greetings, Peter.