Hi,
I feel like perhaps this might be a kind of bug report, but I managed to do a batch import from my point of sale provider’s CSV files (the only kind they offer) into Receipts (after a good deal of massaging of the data/column names), but I was stuck for a while until I realized that the sales figures weren’t being inhaled by M owing to their being prepended by a dollar sign–that column was just blank!
Easily solved, once I realized this, but couldn’t M easily filter these out?
No, it could not. The program expects numbers as amounts. A CSV file simply presents strings of characters, which the program has to interpret as numbers. The currency symbol is not a number, so the program rejects the transaction. Think about it. How is the program supposed to determine that some non-numerical characters should be filtered out and remaining numbers kept, but other characters are not allowable? What is the difference between $3498 and &3498? Why would one be acceptable and the other not? Also remember that Manager allows currencies to be defined with any symbology. So the dollar may not be represented by $ in some cases. And what would happen if the CSV file is in some other currency? Should the South African Rand be represented by R or ZAR?
Yes, I see your point. I might be worth noting this in the instructions given for batch updates/creates, so others don’t stumble as I did. Or perhaps an error or warning message could be thrown to alert the user.
But, OTOH, it IS possible for code to reject anything that is not a number, e.g. isdigit().
It would be best if you performed manipulation like that in a spreadsheet before importing the file. CSV statements follow no standards. What might work for you might not for others. Most users who import CSV statements have to make adjustments first.
Ha! Yes, indeed. In fact, I imported it into a database table where I could make several specific changes, before exporting it back to M. But, yes, a spreadsheet serves similarly. I DID use a spreadsheet to remove all those pesky dollar signs!
Ideally, it would be nice if I could have added all the “Line.” items too, but I suspect those are held in a separate table somewhere in M (using the same key to point back to their “parent”), so I couldn’t see how to do that within a csv file.
Thanks for your input/help!
No, they are not. They are on separate lines within cells. Start a Batch Update and expand the row height after pasting into a spreadsheet to see how this is done.