Gerco/Jeff:

When I try to import the USA birding hotspots, I get an "Unhandled excpetion has occurred in your application... Conversion from string "US-CA" to type 'Double' is not valid."

Can you tell me how to fix?

Thanks,

Ron

Hi Ron,

Just to verify, you are uploading the file that comes with the toolkit, not a file that you have downloaded from eBird?

Gerco

Hi Ron,

You are correct. The eBird hotspot list that is distributed with the toolkit contains all the hotspots as of Feb 2009. I know that in VA alone over 500 new hotspots have been added.

With the knowledge that you donwloaded the updated hotspot list from eBird, the error you received  makes a lot more sense. A few of the locations (perhaps less than 5) contain some characters that the import routine handles improperly or simply miss some information. Now I wish I had written down the incorrect locations and corrected them in eBird. I did correct a few but appearently not all of them. Oh, I am the eBird volunteer hotspot manager for VA and therefore can correct hotspots if needed.

What I will do is create a new master hotspot list with all the new and updated hotspots and work with Jeff to get this list posted on the download page. Is that something that will work for you?

Gerco

All,

An updated eBird hotspot file can be downloaded form the download page http://www.birdersdiary.com/Downloads/tabid/56/Default.aspx (login required). This new file contains over 10,000 corrections and additions to the existing hotspot list. Once you have uploaded this file into the eBird Toolkit, you will have access to over 29,000 hotspots in the western hemisphere and New Zealand.

Download and installation instructions are provided below and on the download page.

1 – download file to local computer;
2 – start eBird toolkit;
3 – click on “import hotspots” button;
4 – navigate to the downloaded file “hotspots-yyyymmdd.csv”;
5 – select the file;
6 – click on OK.

If you encounter any issues, please use the user forum to report them.

Gerco

Thanks for the info on this dbrsmith. That is weird. I just re-uploaded the CSV file, but the site changes it to XLS! Weird. Must be a bug with DotNetNuke - the site hosting software. Definitely, as you have found out, rename to CSV after the download and then import.

thanks.

Jeff