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Datebook Import, Where is it?
What an oversight! The Palm Desktop software lets you import CSV files from other PIM applications, but doesn't include an import for the datebook!
Unfortunately, there's no easy solution to this missing feature. But you're not entirely out of luck, here's a couple of possible workarounds:
- One solution I've found to date is a utility called convdb. It's a bit of a chore though, it doesn't use a CSV file for input, instead it uses a record structure that the programmer created. You'll probably need to heavily massage your incoming data to fit the structure. One possibility is load it into Excel, make any needed data changes using Excel's search and replace functions, set the appropriate fixed length column structure needed by the utility, then print the result to a text file and feed it to the utility. BTW, if you need to go the other direction, export, then the utility dtbk2csv will do the job.
- A second solution involves Yahoo's Calendar application. It allows for import and export to your personal Yahoo calendar and it supports export to the Palm Desktop's *.dba file format. To use it, you'll need to get your source data in a CSV file format that conforms to the format used by Outlook, i.e., the column headings of the CSV file must be:
"Subject","Start Date","Start Time","End Date","End Time","All day event","Description"
To accomplish this, you may need to use an intermediary tool, like Excel, to massage your source CSV file (for example, move or delete columns, add columns, or change the column titles to match exactly the Outlook titles shown above). Once you've gotten the source CSV properly formatted, use Yahoo's import from Outlook CSV file routine to import the file to your Yahoo Calendar.After import to the Yahoo Calendar, it's a simple matter to use the Yahoo Export routine to export the calendar to a Palm *.dba file that can be directly imported to your Palm Desktop.
April 22, 2000 There's now a new shareware product, DIMEX by LinkeSOFT that will import/export CSV files to your Palm Desktop's Datebook.
I've played with the unregistered version (supports only 10 records) and it appears to work as advertised. If you really really need import/export capability, this may be the perfect solution for you. Available at PalmGear HQ.
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