Creating a Personal Data Record (Excel)

Exporting data

       Exporting the data into an IDB Personal Data Record.

       With the completed data entry form on the screen, click the "Create IDB Matter Record" button on the "Pathagoras for Excel" toolbar. The following screen will appear:

Figure 1. The default settings are "Capture the entire spreadsheet, sorted alphabetically"

   You can pass the values of all named cells in the entire spreadsheet into the new matter record (the default). You can also limit the cells that will be captured to those that begin or end with a designated prefix or suffix.

   Note the following additional choices/features: (a) you can limit the cells that will be captured to those on just the current page. This is useful when you have created a 'cover page' or a 'summary sheet.'  These sheets can contain personal data and capture (by reference) the important values from other pages. (Consider computing complex calculations on 'back' sheets and reference the answers on the cover sheet. (b) If you use the 'cover' or 'summary page' method, you can tell Pathagoras to order the results in the Matter record alphabetically (the default), or by the order in which the cells appear on the cover or summary page ("top to bottom" or "left to right"). So you can have full control over how the resulting IDB record will be created by a thoughtful design of the cover page. (c) You can have Excel automatically add [brackets] to your terms so that they match exactly the variables in your Pathagoras (Word) system. (d) If you were forced to 'add' underscore characters to comply with Excel's cell naming rules, you can remove the underscores before saving the values out as an IDB record.

   After you have made your choices on the first screen, click the Next button. The following screen will appear whereby you can provide a name for the matter record. The 'default' name is the name of the spreadsheet. Change the name to anything you wish. An appropriate name would be the name of the client of customer. The name you type will be what will appear in the IDB "Matter Records" list when you display IDB.)

Figure 2. After "Export" is clicked, Pathagoras asks for a name. Provide a name as you wish for
it to appear in the IDB "Personal Data Records" listing.

Note: Once the Matter Record has been created, it is immediately usable by Pathagoras IDB/Word and Pathagoras IDB/Excel. You can open Instant Database in either program, see and, if appropriate, edit the data.