The last year i have changed my OS from Windows to MAC and, little by little, I'm trying to transfer my DBs to MAC. This is a hard job, because I have several thousands of records, uploaded during several years.
On Windows I was using Catraxx, Catvids e Bookcat. After a long study of the MAC software, I have chosen your software, that seems the most flexible and the best for what I need. I have purchased Bookpedia, as first step, and I have started some days ago to try the import operation for this, I think you can imagine, it is not so easy.
But I think it is the most easy of the three (I think that CD DB will be the hardest job).I am arrived to create a "first step" CSV file, with all the info of my books (abot 1.700) and with the links for the covers. I have added also some custom fields on Bookpedia (Subtitle, Type, Printing, Printing by, Original subtitle, Original publisher, Original country, Original language, Purchase currency, Copyright date, Original copyright date). And then the problems have arrived.
1) I have to do several trials, but there is not a counter reset, so I have to delete every time the db, if I want to start from 1 again. But every time i have to update again the custom fields and their description. I have also seen that, also without the db deletion, the import field table is partially reset (not for all the fields) on every import operation.
2) I would use English with Bookpedia, but this is not possible, because my OS uses Italian. It could be nice if we could use a language different from OS (only the language, not the date format or currency).
3) When I export data from Catraxx, that program build the cover file names from the book title. So it happens that you can find strange characters into the name, as "!" (exclamation mark). This is not a big problem, I have changed the name and the link, but yesterday, for this reason, Bookpedia was in loop for several hours, till I didn't cancelled it.
4) My big problem is now to change the thousands of quotation marks (") present in the input fields (synopsis, reviews, notes) because the same are used as field delimiters. Have you any suggestion without to change one by one? I have tried with multiple subs, but it is not possible (there are not standard situations). Another similar problem is to substitute the "/" with "," in keywords and similar.
5) Another little problem I have found with date. With a publish date "1978" (without month and day) after import I have found "feb 1978" and with a publish date "05/2000" (without day) I have then found "feb 2000". I have tried in this case only with two records.
OK, this is all for now. If you can help me with some suggestion I will be glad.
are three personal fields that i use for the original info. Perhaps this because the import program could be force the output field by the input name, the input name are "Original Title", "Original Publisher" and "Original Language" and Bookpedia would put them everytime in Title, Publisher and Language fields, also if there are other input fields for that puprose (without "original" in their name). (SOLVED this last problem changing the import field names)
