polytrope cm assistant/support: EXTRA! v2 Export

Exporting data from EXTRA! v2.4

If you are still using EXTRA! and you want to run a report that is not already built into EXTRA!, your best option is to contact Polytrope Solutions and find out if CM Assistant (= EXTRA! version 3) has this report built into it, and if it does, then you should upgrade to CM Assistant. But if this is not a practical option at the moment, here's how you can export data from EXTRA! You can then move the exported data into Excel (or into your own FileMaker Pro file) and massage or manipulate it to your heart's content.

The first question to get answered is, what data do you want to export? The answer to this question determines what file you will do the export from. If you just want a list of stops, then you can do this from the stops file. If you want history, that comes from the delivery file. Regardless of the file you start with, here's what you do.

NOTE: The term "source file" is used here to describe the file from which you're initiating the export.

1. Go to the source file by clicking on the appropriate button in the button bar.
2. Click on the "L(ist)" button to go to list layout.
3. Find the records you want to export. If you want to export everything in the file, hold down the SHIFT and CONTROL keys, and while you have these two buttons held down, click on the "F(ind)" button in the button bar. A dialog should appear asking if you want to find all the active records (omitting the inactive ones) or if instead you want to find everything regardless of status. Make your choice.
4. Once the found set contains the records you want to export, pull down in the EXTRA! menu to "Special". This takes you to the special utility layout.
5. Click on the "Export/Import" button.
6. A dialog will appear asking what you want to do. Click on "Export".
7. A standard file dialog appears. You have to do three things here, a, b and c, as follows:
   (a) Use the "type" pop-up menu to select the file format for the output. There are many options, including exporting to a simple FileMaker Pro file, to SYLK, to tab-delimited text, etc. SYLK and tab-delimited are good choices if you are going to move this data into a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel. If you want to play with the data in FileMaker, simply export to a plain FileMaker Pro file.
   (b) Give the output file a name, e.g. "Stops Exported.tab" (if you export to a tab-delimited file).
   (c) Indicate where you want the output file to be saved.
8. Once you've made those selections, click on "Save".
9. Now you need to tell EXTRA! (well, FileMaker really) what fields to export. In the dialog that appears, fields in the source file are shown on the left. A number of fields will also by default probably appear on the right (depends on what version of EXTRA! you have). Look at the fields on the right and see if they seem to represent all the data you're interested in. If you wish to add fields to this list, you'll need to nose around in the list on the left and find fields whose names seem to indicate that they are what you want. Couple of notes:
   (a) Fields are typed in a very basic way. "t stop city" is a text field. "n tot dropped" is a number field. The prefix "x" indicates that the field is a calculation field, so "xt driver name" is a calculation field showing the driver's name (in this case, calculation would be needed probably because the data is coming from another file).
   (b) You can use the pop-up menu above the list on the left to get access to data in related files. The relationship you are most likely to be interested in is the one probably named "ROU|ID rou" i.e. the routes file. And the field you're most likely to be interested in here is "::t route name". (The double-colon indicates that this is a related file.)
10. As for the other options on this dialog you can ignore them, in other words, leave "Don't format output" selected (it's the default) and do not click on the "Summarize" button. (For more information about these options, consult the online Help for FileMaker Pro or your FileMaker users guide.)
11. When the list on the right contains the fields you are interested in, click on the Export button. This will export the data.

That's it. This will create a single, flat file that the folks at the other paper can make use of.

Copyright © 2002, Polytrope Solutions, Houston, Texas. All rights reserved.
last modified: 9-Mar-04

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