Hello ...

It would be much appreciated if a feature were added that allowed Book > Update - Internet Query to be run on selected records, a subset, or even the dbf en mass ...

Any chance of that? <g>

Thanks, RCB[/i]

I am not certain but I think you may be asking the same question I did some time ago. You can see that posting and Fredriks reply via this link:

http://www.fnprg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4004&highlight=internet+update+multiple


As you can see Fredrik has clearly stated that this is not possible.


As I have seen this capability in other book collection programs I have always wondered why this is so. Presumably something in the design of BookCat makes it not practical to implement.

Actually what really seems odd to me is that you can add in several ISBN numbers in batches and download them at once so it seems like a group selection for multiple record updates on records already entered is feasible.



Any comment Fredrik?

-Devin


PS,

Happy Holidays everyone.

Feasible yes, but probably not the easiest thing to code/implement. Though I would personally enjoy this feature!!

Hi Fredrik,

I'd like to cast my vote for Update - Query Internet batch processing.

I've got upwards of 800 records that need this sort of function.

Sorry about the redundant posting here and in the General forum. I should have just posted here first.

Have a great day everyone!

I'm totally interested in that one. I've just spent a month entering ISBNs and Reference numbers of around 12.000 books in an Excel datasheet. Then I imported all those numbers in BookCAT, and now I am downloading all the other book info from the internet. It's a rather slow process. I wish that there was some kind of a batch or group command to automatically update all selected books, so that I don't have to do them all one by one.

If all you have are ISBN's (with "reference numbers?") you can copy them from your Excel spreadsheet into the clipboard, and past the list directly into the Add New (Download from Internet) popup. There's a "File" menu option in the popup that gets you started. You can also load a text file containing a list of your ISBNs.

This would be a "start from scratch" method though, and would add new records rather than update your existing ones. Also, there is a yes/no prompt that appears if an ISBN is already in the BookCAT database. It asks you if you'd like to continue anyway. I don't know how that prompt would be handled when pasting a large list of ISBNs.

Starting with a completely new database would be a viable workaround for a pasting or loading a new list of ISBNs. Obviously you don't want to do anything that would compromise all the data you've already entered by hand.

Did you enter any information besides ISBNs? What are the "reference numbers" you mentioned?

Regardless of how you approach this, make sure that auto-backup is enabled (Tools | Options | Backup).

To be on the really safe side you might want to make your own multiple before-after backups of everything you do, with date-time stamps - especially if you decide to do anything remotely resembling any of my suggestions!

Have a good one,

Thanks for the reply! I'm well acquainted with the method you mentioned. Reference numbers are unique book identifiers in my library, which are used to locate a specific book (e.g. 1.a/001.01 is the firs book of a 30-book Brittanica set). So, I cannot use the ISBN add method because each ISBN is linked to a unique Reference no. That's the most important part of the whole system.

I'm doing backups regularly.

You're in the same boat I am then. When I started using BookCAT I imported a large database of manually entered records with ISBNs and in some cases no ISBNs because I was too stupid to know where to look. Some of the ISBNs have turned out to have invalid check digits or other formatting issues.

I go here http://isbntools.com/ as a starting point for dealing with the bad ISBNs. There are helpful tools there, especially if you're into XML and know how to poke the internet servers BookCAT searches for info. I used to do the latter but lost track of the changes in Amazon's web services.

You have a good idea for dealing with multiple volume sets. I think I'll take another look at some of mine and see if a numbering system like that can be used to add another layer of organizing them.

Have a good one,

To make a complete update I use a macro (recorded the squence of keypresses) made with Macroscheduler in a vmware virtual machine. It takes about a week to complete the task but it works.
Regards