Imported Rolodex into Synapse

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Jerry, Apr 24, 2009.

  1. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    Ok, I finally did it .. imported all 1156 Spokane physicians from my existing CSV table directly into remr.fdb's GPS table using MS Access. Here's how:

    Already had an Access database table for Spokane Physicians, saved to CSV.

    Found a free application called CSVed for manipulating CSV files so I could easily merge my existing State/Zip into a single CITY column, which is how GPS stores it, and merge existing FirstName/MI columns into GPS's APPELL column. Changed the column names (FIELD NAMES) to match GPS's column names.


    Deleted the primary key column from SpokanePhysicians table. Graham assured me that Firebird/synapse would autogenerate the new primary keys after import. He was right, it did. SpokanePhysicians column also has a lot of duplicate physician name entries for physicians with multiple practice addresses, which Graham also assured me should be no problem. He was right about that too.


    Launched SpokanePhysicians CSV file with Excel, and saved to excel format to avoid having to make sure all the " " comma delimiters were all correct. Smart move (long story on that one).


    Open remr.fdb with MS Access using Open -->ODBC Databases-->Machine Data Source-->remr


    Used Access's "Get External Data-->Import" function to directly import my "doctored up" SpokanePhysician.xls spreadsheet directly into remr.fdb's GPS table (don't forget to check "First Row Contains Column Headings").

    Got about 5 errors that only 5 records out of 1156 contained null values and couldn't be imported.

    Very easy overall to do.

    JUST TO ADD: It's a dang good thing Graham made it so I can filter first on Specialty, then filter on Surname with this many entries. Very nice feature.


  2. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Nice .. would you be able to post this how-to to the wiki?

  3. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    [quote user="jparkdo"]

    Found a free application called CSVed for manipulating CSV files so I could easily merge my existing State/Zip into a single CITY column, which is how GPS stores it, and merge existing FirstName/MI columns into GPS's APPELL column. Changed the column names (FIELD NAMES) to match GPS's column names.

    [/quote]

    Hmm. Merging firstname with MI means that your letters will go out addressed like

    Dear John H

    Blah blah ...
  4. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    [quote user="Graham"][quote user="jparkdo"]

    Found a free application called CSVed for manipulating CSV files so I could easily merge my existing State/Zip into a single CITY column, which is how GPS stores it, and merge existing FirstName/MI columns into GPS's APPELL column. Changed the column names (FIELD NAMES) to match GPS's column names.

    [/quote]

    Hmm. Merging firstname with MI means that your letters will go out addressed like

    Dear John H

    Blah blah ...

    [/quote]

    Yeah, mostly I need the salutation field to print "John H" with Surname "Adams" for consult/test requests. I rarely write reqular letters with "Dear John" format for this stuff, it's usually on a form of some sort with the docs name as John Adams, MD, or John H. Adams, MD. For the exceedingly few that I write "regular English Letters" I'll just change the salutation on a case-by-case basis.
  5. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    Update. I did not realize that synapse client will throw up an error upon trying to edit a provider's information if the email address is just a website address. It's not much of a problem to me, I can fix each one on a case-by-case basis as the need arises. Graham says it won't mess anything else up other than an attempt to use synapse to send email to that provider.

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