Import

[Andreas]

Hi there,

I was so happy to find MLO, but already in the first steps this is getting more and more frustrating.
I was using OmniFocus for 7 years containing about 1,000 active tasks by now. I´ve exportet them and mapped all columns matching to MLO.

I just need some basic fields like project, context, start, due, reminder, notes... nothing special.
This really shold work because there is no complexity - every piece of todo or gtd programms are using that kind of fields.

I really cannot understand, why there is no way to import them to MLO in an easy way.
Why there is a complex parser but no way to import well structured text ???

1) I´ve tried to rewrite all tasks fitting for RTE parser but this is not working well
2) The tab import only imports the Task names itselef
3) XML Import ... where can I finde the xml schema MLO understands?

MLO programmers should know, that this is one of the biggest challenges when trying or migrating to another software.
Do MLO needs no more users / money or why do they make the start with the software that hard and frustrating ?

I´m really stunned of this missing little but so basic feature, because MLO is really powerful and well concepted.
I need my old tasks. Maybe I made a false decision ?

please help
regards
Andreas

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 15.01.2016 um 15:59 schrieb Andreas:
> I just need some basic fields like project, context, start, due,
> reminder, notes... nothing special.

Why don't you create a MLO file that contains some example tasks with
these fields, and export it in MLO in tab and xml format? Then you can
see exactly how the required tab and xml format looks like.

-- Christoph

[Andreas]

Why don't you create a MLO file that contains some example tasks with
these fields, and export it in MLO in tab and xml format? Then you can
see exactly how the required tab and xml format looks like.

Hi,

I´ve already tried that but as mentioned, the tab-export just import the task name itself.

Concerning XML I need some further Information how to define the scheme. I couldn´t find a schema or some hints how to make the excel XML Export work neither in MLO help nor the forum. Could you help ?

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 15.01.2016 um 17:55 schrieb Andreas:
> I´ve already tried that but as mentioned, the tab-export just import the
> task name itself.

You're right, it only consists of the tree of task titles and the task
notes. I though it was more like a CSV file with all fields.

> Concerning XML I need some further Information how to define the scheme.
> I couldn´t find a schema or some hints how to make the excel XML Export
> work neither in MLO help nor the forum. Could you help ?

You probably need some kind of scripting language to transform the
OmniFocus export format to the MLO input format.

-- Christoph

[althegr...@gmail.com]

Hi Andreas,

Have you tried to File>Export  to MindManager XML?

I can easily read the XML with Notepad++ and re-import the file. Also MindManager reads and shows the data.

I might suggest making a very simple and data limited MLO file, then export that to show MLO's XML structure.

What XML tools are you working with?


Let us know about your progress,
-Al

[Andreas]

Hi Al,

I don´t have a MindManager and don´t want to install additional programms just for temporary use.

But u´re right - I can see the XML structure which MLO needs but I don´t know how to apply that Information to my data.

I´m not familiar with XML Tools - I thought, maybe I could use Excel to generate XML?!

Would you use excel or what Kind of XML Tools would you recommend ?

Will I be able to make Excel or the XML tool reading the (exported MindManager) XML structure to generate a scheme which I can use for my data ?

regards :-)

Andreas

[althegr...@gmail.com]

Hi Andreas,

I don't have any XML tools and am not familiar with importing / exporting XML.

I thought you were from your first post and you just wanted a sample of MLO's XML.

1) I´ve tried to rewrite all tasks fitting for RTE parser but this is not working well
2) The tab import only imports the Task names itselef
3) XML Import ... where can I finde the xml schema MLO understands?

You have exported your 1000 tasks already. What did you export it to? Can you create the syntax that RTE needs with that exported data then use RTE to build you MLO file?

Perhaps a sample task of your exported data might help someone here think of something that might help.

-Al

[Andreas]

Hi Al

You have exported your 1000 tasks already. What did you export it to? Can you create the syntax that RTE needs with that exported data then use RTE to build you MLO file?
Perhaps a sample task of your exported data might help someone here think of something that might help.

I´ve exported the data to csv. Via excel I´ve tried to script each row for RTE but just because there seems to be not better way to import the structured data.

Example:

"Testtask          This is the note. They can´t be parsed with a dedicated switch" -start 01.01.2015 -due 01.02.2016 -reminder 01.01.2015  context home; -toprjTestproject -*

I´ve tried that in many different but similar expressions without success.

Not all the data are parsed correctly. Sometimes I need to use blanks, sometimes not depending on the order of the Switches. Not all the date Dates are getting parsed althouth the switches are correct. The context doesn´t end at the ";" if I put it somewhere in the middle of the Statement.

-Andreas

[Steve Kunkel]

I'm not really familiar with XML, but I'll bet that, if OmniFocus can export to XLS or CSV, then you could get it to work.   As Christoph suggested, do an MLO export to see the structure of the exported Excel file.  Then if you needed to, maybe you could manually select the individual columns from you Omni export, and paste them to the corresponding columns in the MLO export.  Then re-import.  

Also, if OF does let you export as MindmanagerXML, then definitely try that....  You probably don't need to have MM installed.   Just save the exported file, and import it right into MLO.  (Maybe?)

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Andreas. I am not much of an expert on import and export but I know a little about RTE and parsing and I can see that some of your trouble comes from limitations of the RTE/Parsing facilty. For that reason I do not think that RTE/Parsing should be the means by which your tasks enter MLO. I would suggest using one of the XML or Tab imports. I notice that MLO can import MLO-XML, Mindmanager-XML and TabDelimited; I also notice that MLO can export all of those formats. So if I were trying to solve this problem I would start by setting up an MLO profile with lots of sample tasks that showed all of the variety and complexity of my live tasks. I would export the tasks in all three formats (tab, MLOxml, and MindManagerXml), figure out the one that seemed to contain all of the desired complexity while remaining easiest to understand, then reformat my exported CSV-formatted tasks to follow the chosen format, then import them and review them carefully to repair whatever imported incorrectly.

FYI (and you can skip this if you are not that interested) the parsing limitation that I see you hitting involves multiple dates in a single task. If you want a task to have a start date and a different due date, you cannot just specify a line with both dates. Only one date will be parsed and it will be assigned to both start and due. Instead you have to specify one of the dates and then specify Lead Time equal to the interval between the two dates. For example, parsing "starting today due tomorrow" will yield a task with start and due date on the same day, I think today. But parsing "starting today with lead time one day" or "due tomorrow with lead time one day" will give the desired results. According to some discussion in this forum about 5 years ago, this is not a bug, it was built that way for some very specific reason which I did not actually understand.

[Andreas]

Hi Arthur,

 

thank you so much for your detailed thoughts and sorry for beeing late with my answer.

 

I´m always interessted in understanding Background Information. But in this case I am not able to spend much time on this.

I wanted to evaluate the program with my data and not on 3nd Party Software or Format questions.

 

Arthur, you´ve done a great Job tryring to help me!!!

 

1. But where is the MLO Support ?
2. Why there is no FAQ for newbies who are willing to migrate to MLO ?
3. Why do newbies have to spend time on finding out all XML parameters - there should / MUST be a definition to download ?
4. Why there is a parser which is working really not well when trying to define several parameters?
5. I´m shure I´m not the only one with this problem - this piece of software seems to be on market since more than a decade. How much time has been spend on this in sum ?

 

It really would be easy to get this working - I´m not willing to spend time on that kind of needless things to find a individual solution and getting in danger of lost data. I would recognize data loss not directly as it was by trying the rtd (who could know, that you can define a start date OR a due date but NOT both ?!!?) 

 

What I want to say is, that I wanted to buy the software for all my devices but I need to trust the developers to be near the customer.

But my very first step with MLO was needlessly so hard, so I´m very disapointed now.

I have a few more days left on evaluation. I copied a lot of tasks in MLO by hand (thanks for that time). MLO seems to be great but if my evaluation ends I think I have to continue on OmniFocus :-( I really like MLO but I need a quick and stable migration. The will be lot to do left in configuration of MLO and I just can spend my time on this.

Please don´t get me wrong. I just feel abandoned not from the forum but from the software itself or the programmers. There should be no need to find out individual ways for that.

My data are to sensible for that way of try and error.

One last thing.

Could someone tell my, why there is no "mini input dialog" for entering one task with all the details in columns. The efford would be 2 hrs for a good programmer and the user can be sure his input is not getting parsed the wrong way.

I´m really shocked, that this really good and powerful piece of software is missing that way to input data.