One of the most common problems users have with Inventory Tracker is Importing data into the app from CSV Files.
First, see the help page in the app- goto settings, import from dropbox and click the ? button on the top left.
To get the most recent version of the export template, simply open the app, make sure you have added at least one item and do an export to email or to dropbox. Then open that file OpenOffice, Numbers or another spreadsheet program.
This process is mostly trivial, but there are several caveats, and the process is certainly not fool proof. The app is rather picky about the data format and there are many different spreadsheet formats out there. Especially for those who are less tech savy and do not know what a CSV file is… you may run into unexpected issues because your files are not saved in the format that the app requires.
Import files must be in CSV format, aka ‘comma separated values’. This is a simple text file where each column is separated by a comma and each line is separated with a new line. This requires that none of your columns can contain commas, or it will mess up the entire file alignment. If you are saving a file, you want to ensure that it is saving as CSV with the settings:
– columns separated by comma
– No Text Delimiter
– Do not check “Quoted Field as Text”
I recommend using OpenOffice. This is simply because it is free software and it is what I use, so all the examples will use this software. If you are using Excel, I will not be much help, as I do not have Excel and therefore can’t help to troubleshoot it.
1. Opening an Export, editing it an re-importing.
– Launch OpenOffice
– Select Open File
– Navigate to your DropBox -> Apps -> Inventory Tracker folder
– Select the File you’d like to load
– In the settings Screen, select comma as the separator, no text delimiter and do not check “quoted text as field”
– perform your edits, ensuring not to add any columns
– save your file to the Dropbox->Apps->InventoryTracker folder, titled whatever name you’d like
– ensure you select ‘Keep current Format’
– You may now import this file back into Inventory Tracker through the app settings screen.
Note that if you have an already existing export file, you can access the images on your desktop by using the image ID column from your export file for that item. Open your browser and enter this in your URL bar:
http://logansease.com/inventory_images/[image id]