Export function

I now have over 600 entries in LT, and for the first time tried the export feature (to csv). I was quite disheartened to see the lack of several data fields. In fact, I thought it would give me a list of fields that I would like to include in the export. Important fields to me that are missing are Date Acquired and Date Finished Reading.

In LT I wanted to search by date finished reading and could not figure out how to do that, so I thought I could export it and search that way.

Am I missing a feature somewhere that would allow me to export all of my data fields? I see there are API's available. Will that allow me to export any of the data fields?

Thanks

Did you try both export formats? Tab-delimited has a few more fields than CSV. Don't recall if the dates are there, either, though.

The APIs, I think, don't access quite all the fields either. Haven't used them and don't remember the details.

Did you notice in the "Your books" view the double arrow icon in the header bar? That will allow you many kinds of sorting behaviours. Yes, sorting is not searching, but it might help you a little.

ARG! The "will appear in a moment" was several minutes, and I got impatient. Sorry for the clutter.

Tab-delimited has all four date fields - entered, acquired, started, ended. TD has a lot more fields than CSV, including collections (that's new as of yesterday). It doesn't have covers, Other Authors (the current form of that), or any CK fields (including Series, which I really wanted). But much more useful than CSV.

I believe that the LT importer can read the CSV fields and include them when it puts in a book - if you feed the importer a file that has exactly that info with those labels in that order, it will show up.

In the past I've found the export sufficiently annoying that I use an alternative method:
In IE (not Firefox):
Get the columns you want to show in your library view.
Open the printable catalogue.
Select all.
Paste into Excel.
Hit with a big stick until it's the shape you want.

This means you can export any set of fields you want, though it is a bit of a faff.

11>

How on earth is that easier than getting the tab-delimited, opening in Excel, and then "hitting it with a stick"?

It does let you save any field that exists, including CK ones.

I've never tried it in IE, but in FF it was driving me nuts with double author fields and other muck. So I had the reverse - selecting printable was sufficiently annoying that I settled for the export. I should try it in IE, sometime.

Well, you get the series info; not sure if any other useful fields are missing. Tbh I haven't exported lately - I suspect that it's working better than last time I looked (i.e. it didn't have collections).

>13 jjmcgaffey: - Yeah, it's a 'mare in FF. Comes out much better in IE (the only use I ever make of IE, as it happens!).

The cut-and-paste method would also pick up green fields (those are fields that aren't actually in your catalog but calculated by LT).

16>

Ah, that's true. I've eliminated green fields for anything I care about, so I hadn't really thought about that.

11> In IE8 you can select "print to a file" in the printer options, then open with xl

Thanks all for the different techniques. I did not try the tab delimited. I figured they would be identical and duh! forgot about the sorting feature by clicking on the column header.

I really hope the export feature gets some work done on it. I would think that a form with checkboxes allowing you to select the fields you want to export would be great. I am a Java programmer so I may give the APIs a look.

You can also use Excel's built-in "web import" feature to select a table on pretty much any website and automatically import it into your spreadsheet. It treats it as a data source and as such, allows you to right-click in your sheet and refresh the data from the web too.

Instructions (Office 2003): http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6115870.html?part=rss&tag...

>11 mart1n:

My printable catalogue is a blank page. Do we have too many books or...?

>21 anglemark: Clearly you don't have too many books, that being impossible.

Did you wait a long time for it to load? Mine takes a while, and yours is... impressive. I suppose it's possible that it's more than the browser can cope with. You could try Andrew's method above, though that involved Excel locking up when I tried it (it got there in the end), so again, patience is a virtue.

Selecting a non-cover view might help.

Ah, selecting a non-cover view did the trick. Of course. Thanks!