Marilyn,

I am behind on getting these to you. I wanted to update you. Please continue your testing and I will get the import file to you by end of today.

fyi

Jeff

Hello Marilyn,

Import the attached file

1. File | Import/Export
2. Choose the Sightings TAB
3. Import using "Import BD Sightings Export File"
4. Select the attached file below after you download it to your system

Note: You will have a few extra test sightings that I happened to have in my test database also.

Let me know if I can assist further,

Jeff

Hi Jeff,  I think I followed the steps correctly, but I get an error message when I try to import the Avisys files into Birder's Diary.  I will attempt to include the screen capture of the error message.  I tried doing it with and without the field notes involved, but got the same message.

Rob

Hi Rob,

Please zip and email both your avisys export files to me. I will convert them to a BD sightings import file for you and return that with instructions.

Jeff

This is not your fault Rob. For some reason, this code on some systems behaves badly.

I will get it done on my system and return it to you.

Jeff

Hi all,

I just wanted to let everyone know everything worked perfectly once I got Jeff's converted files.  He seemed a trifle amazed by the number of sightings I had--I quote: "(43,476 sightings!!!)"  Just out of curiosity, I have two questions: 1) Since this is apparently high, what's a typical number?; 2) Is the size of the file the reason why I had trouble doing it on my own computer?
 

I had one other more general comment.  Some of the sightings came out as to places, others only to the states/provinces.  At first I was puzzled then realized this was a limitation in Avisys.  I think both are good programs, but I think Birder's Diary is the more powerful & flexible of the two.

Cheers,

Rob

Actually Rob - good questions...

This AviSys conversion was one of the few things not written by myself or SteveO. It was written by Dave Diehl pre-v3.0 developer. The conversion used Integer values for certain things in the conversion, which prevented it from working on more than 32k sightings! So, to get your 43k sightings to work, I had to modify much of the code to use 4 byte variables allowing for up to 2 billion sightings. If you ever get that many entered, then I quit! 

But this is not the error you reported and is the error I have not been able to fix because it doesn't happen on any of my systems. If I could reproduce it, then I would be able to fix it. Also, I haven't tried that hard because the number of folks that convert to AviSys each year and that experience this problem is below 5 per year, so I just do the conversion myself as I have done for you.

Thanks and take care,

Jeff

Ah yes - I had forgotten about what we used to call the half-word boundary on old IBM mainframes. Half-word = two bytes = 15 bits plus a sign bit gave us a maximum of 32,767.

I guess that Dave just never expected people to have more than 32K sightings.