Problems importing from iFlash

[cloudee]

Hello Ernie,

first of all thanks for a great app!

I have been using iFlash on my Mac and have been able to import files from to FD, but depending on the iFlash content I am having the hardest time importing.
There is a file in which I use line breaks and "-" on the flashcard sides, and when I create a .csv upon exporting it comes out alright in the preview option of Mac OS Snow Leopard, but when I open it in Excel (trying to add the pictures I used in iFlash) I get formula errors. In the export option of iFlash I have tried using citation marks to work around, but without success. Opening the .csv in Numbers turned out worse. The only way I have been able to import the text has been as tab-seperated .txt, but this makes adding pictures to that file very tiresome as would be correcting each formula error.

Do you have any idea that could help?
The coolest thing in the future for me would of course be if there were some kind of converter that could convert the .cards files, but I would already be very happy if I could get those flashcards in a decent format to edit them in spread sheets.

I'd be very grateful for any help!
Claudia

[cloudee]

Update:
What has been working now is saving my cards as a .txt with "" and tab-seperating the column items, then changing the filename to .csv and opening this is Excel. Before this, I have replaced all the = by -->. (Maybe it would have worked without.) I then saved the pictures in the iFlash cards manually (.tiff files) and put the filenames in a new column in my Excel spreadsheet.

I would be extremely happy should there be some other less timeconsuming solution... !!

[Ernie]

I don't understand all the details you are mentioning. I see the a line starting with "-" can confuse Excel. To fix this, open the text file up in TextEdit and add a single quote to the beginning of lines that start with "-". You can find - and replace with '=. But you mention new lines and then it gets tricky because a - at the beginning of a new line if NOT the first line should work just fine as is... the new lines should stay within a single cell in Excel, not get moved to a new row.

I'm not sure what the time consuming part is. Hopefully this is not something you need to do more than a few times assuming you are permanently moving from iFlash. Adding the picture names in a new column is a necessary manual step. I don't know how the iFlash output looks to know if they export picture file names or how this task might be easier.

If you want to email me some export from iFlash I'm happy to take a look to see if I have any suggestions.