Copy and Paste

     

With VisiTrax, it's very easy to copy complete listings to and from the Windows clipboard, using a common tabular form supported by Microsoft Excel and many other programs. While exporting data from VisiTrax to the clipboard is more or less foolproof, you should be aware that successfully importing data created by other applications, from the clipboard, requires that the data follows certain formatting conventions, as described herein.

 

Copying Data to the Clipboard

 

To copy (export) the listed items in any of the listing views (Tracks, Volumes, Volume Contents, or Playlist) to the Windows clipboard, select one of the following from either the Edit menu or the right-click pop-up menu:

 

Copy Main Columns to Clipboard
Copy Every Column to Clipboard

 

Each of these has a submenu:

 

Select Normal Text Format if you will be pasting into anything other than a spreadsheet (or into a spreadsheet whose cells have first been preformatted to Text).
Select Spreadsheet Compatible if you will be pasting into a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel This will ensure that times (e.g. "25:32") and hexadecimal values will appear correctly within the spreadsheet.

 

A complete export of all tracks and the volumes on which they reside can be obtained by copying every column to the clipboard from the Tracks view. (If all your volumes contain tracks, this will result in a complete export of the entire database.)

 

Shortcut: Pressing Ctrl-C is equivalent to selecting Copy Every Column to Clipboard > Normal Text Format.
Pressing Ctrl-X is equivalent to selecting Copy Every Column to Clipboard > Spreadsheet Compatible.

 

Pasting Data from the Clipboard

 

Data copied to the Windows clipboard (as described above, or equivalent) can be pasted (imported) into the Tracks, Volumes, or Volume Contents view. Each such view requires a different core set of named columns; any non-relevant columns will be ignored.

 

Here are some guidelines for successfully importing data into VisiTrax via paste:

 

1)The order in which columns appear is not important, just the column names. To obtain an example of the format needed for pasting into a given VisiTrax view, simply press Ctrl-C to copy the data from that view to the clipboard, then examine it by pasting it into a spreadsheet program or text editor. You only need to see a few rows of data for this purpose, so you might first want to apply some filtering to obtain just a small sample.
 
2)When pasting into the Volumes view, each row must contain, at a minimum, data for VOLUME_ARTIST, VOLUME_TITLE, and MEDIA_FORMAT, plus a distinct (and valid) INDEX. Any track-specific information will be ignored.
 
3)When pasting into the Tracks view, each row must contain, at a minimum, data for ARTIST, TRACK_TITLE, and CATEGORY, plus sufficient information to identify the containing volume. This latter can be either the volume's INDEX, if a separate volume table was first pasted into the Volumes view, or otherwise the VOLUME_ARTIST, VOLUME_TITLE, and MEDIA_FORMAT.
 
4)When pasting a single, composite table into the Tracks view (i.e. no separate Volumes table), and a volume INDEX is provided, there is no need to repeat the remaining volume information after the first row for a given volume. If no INDEX is used, the other required volume fields must exactly match from track row to track row, for a given volume.
 
5)When pasting into the Volume Contents view, all pasted tracks will be assigned to the currently displayed volume. Any volume-specific information will be ignored
 
6)The GRP_TIME and VOL_TIME columns are ignored, as their data is automatically derived from track times.
 
7)A single LOCATION column can be used in lieu of the INDEX and NO. columns.
 
8)All other columns not specifically mentioned above are optional.

 

Shortcut:Pressing Ctrl-V is equivalent to selecting Paste from Clipboard.

 

See also:Merging Library Files
Printing CD Labels
Exporting Track Lists
Exporting Volume Lists

 

Copyright 2006 Synapsa Productions