Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
Ok, good luck. BulkEdit will remind you a bit of Excel, but alas, it is not as powerful. But there are a few features highly tuned to the needs of DVD Profiler, so I hope it will help you get the job done.

Thanks!  If you ever work on a solution to what you mentioned before, about being able to edit existing profiles let me know. Love to help or test it if you did come up with something.

BulkEdit V2.44 Available

- Plugin features are now adjusted when running as a client of remote database to avoid errors. When a new database is opened, the plugin unloads and then re-loads in order to reconfigure.

BulkEdit V2.45 Available

- Added Collection \ Flags \ Flag Watched
- Added "Make Box Set" to Collection \ Flagged \ Clone to Manual
  With this option, up to 100 manual profiles can be created as clones of each flagged profile. The clones are automatically added as children of the original profile. The processing loop has been enhanced with a progress bar, which when clicked, interrupts the processing to protect from unintended long processing cycles. As with DVDP Copy/Paste and the other BE cloning menus, specific portions of the profile can be selected or excluded as part of the cloning process.

Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
BulkEdit V2.45 Available

- Added Collection \ Flags \ Flag Watched

A hint for those unfamiliar with flags: you can invert flags with Shift & Ctrl & I, so this is also an easy way to see the unwatched.

Quote:
- Added "Make Box Set" to Collection \ Flagged \ Clone to Manual

Nice, works as expected. I have no real use for this right now, but it might come in handy.

A small oddity: the points "Flag Child Profiles..." and "Flag Parents..." show up under "Flagged". Shouldn't they be under "Flag"?

Here is a summary of the Menus added to DVDP by BulkEdit:

Tools \ BulkEdit
- Edit Profile Data
- Delete BulkEdit Tags

Collection \ Flags
- Flag Between
- Flag Box Sets
- Flag Gifts
- Flag Watched

Collection \ Flagged
- Add Disc
- Clone To Manual
- Clone to DiscID
- Clone Children from DiscIDs
- Delete All Discs
- Clear Collection#
- Flag Child Profiles
- Flag Parents

These have been chosen based on various user requests over time and typically are either not available or harder to do in the native DVDP. Of course, this changes over time, as Ken adds new features. I haven't kept track closely enough to delete any features which have been rendered unnecessary.

Wow. Sorry for your troubles.

First of all, BulkEdit never won any awards for its user interface. Sorry about the fonts.

Instructions - they could be better, but they do exist:
- First post of this thread (info, screen shots, tips and hints)
- BulkEdit web page

Next, you have a set of issues regarding export to Excel. I haven't used that for awhile. I will test it. Some of the messages are normal, as part of Excel's attempting to import XML with no associated schema. Suggestion: Try importing a NON-BulkEdit XML, just to get a feeling for what is "normal."

Now, in terms of what you are trying to do, I don't think you need to export to Excel. Just make the changes inside the BulkEdit spreadsheet to Location and Slot, and save the validated changes to update the profiles.

Can you describe what process you expected to perform after you exported to Excel?

Just FYI, here was my thinking as I developed BulkEdit regarding Excel:

- My first thought was to use Excel directly and communicate to/from it. That didn't work (years ago), and I was crashing DVDP. So I gave up on that.
- Then I decided to create my own watered-down spreadsheet. It was a heck of a lot of work. And if I were to do it all over again, I could use better tools that Microsoft has made available since then.
- In order to compensate for the lack of Exel functions in my spreadsheet, I made the Multi-Copy  toolset, which has some ways to make mass changes on columns of data, using find/replace and Regex.

Given the BulkEdit spreadsheet and the Multi-Copy tools, I don't think you would need Excel in order to make changes to Location and Slot (the original motivator for BulkEdit, as a companion to LoadDVD).

Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
Wow. Sorry for your troubles.

First of all, BulkEdit never won any awards for its user interface. Sorry about the fonts.

Instructions - they could be better, but they do exist:
- First post of this thread (info, screen shots, tips and hints)
- BulkEdit web page

Next, you have a set of issues regarding export to Excel. I haven't used that for awhile. I will test it. Some of the messages are normal, as part of Excel's attempting to import XML with no associated schema. Suggestion: Try importing a NON-BulkEdit XML, just to get a feeling for what is "normal."

Now, in terms of what you are trying to do, I don't think you need to export to Excel. Just make the changes inside the BulkEdit spreadsheet to Location and Slot, and save the validated changes to update the profiles.

Can you describe what process you expected to perform after you exported to Excel?

Thanks for your response!

Ok. From reading your links (above) I am guessing that Export - Edit - Re-import - Update is not really possible . . . Anyway what I was trying to do was:

  - Load profiles ( I was doing them all, but tried a small number also)
          - Fields: Location
                    Slot
                    Description Side A
                    Sort Title
  - Export to Excel
  - Use Excels Advanced sort capabilities to order current profiles based on 3 Sony 400 Disc changers by Location & Slot.
  - Paste New Location & Slot data (per-prepared to match sort order)
  - Save - Import (back to update) - Update

Hope that helps give a picture of what I was hoping to do. Sounds like that may not be possible.

The sort order inside BulkEdit was not conducive to what I need to do (i.e., numerical sort returning 1, 10 100, etc instead of 1,2,3. With no leading zeros in the Slot field I don't know how I can do it quickly. I have an excel list of of all the new locations ordered by the disk's existing locations D1, D2 & D3 being the "Locations" corresponding to my three changes and 1 - 400 Slot location within each changer.

I have around a thousand disks that need to have the Location And Slot fields altered as described. Hopefully you may have an Idea of how I can accomplish this with your software.

So that I don't waste any more of your valuable time, I've decided to give you a snap shot of the changes so that you can see exactly what I am doing. As my changers have no HDMI and my routers has failed I am going to move toward a server solution storing my disks in sleeves. The sleeves are the standard 4 per side, 8 per sheet (Side A = Page 1, Side B = Page 2, etc). So:

(Existing) Location - Slot | (New) Location - Slot 
D1 - 1  |  Page: 1 - Disk: 1
D1 - 2  |  Page: 1 - Disk: 2
D1 - 3  |  Page: 1 - Disk: 3
D1 - 4  |  Page: 1 - Disk: 4
D1 - 5  |  Page: 2 - Disk: 1
D1 - 6  |  Page: 2 - Disk: 2
D1 - 7  |  Page: 2 - Disk: 3
D1 - 8  |  Page: 2 - Disk: 4
D1 - 9  |  Page: 3 - Disk: 1
D1 - 10  |  Page: 3 - Disk: 2
. . .
D1 - 400  |  Page: 100 - Disk: 4
. . .
D2 - 1  |  Page: 101 - Disk: 1
. . .
D2 - 400  |  Page: 200 - Disk: 4
. . .
D3 - 1  |  Page: 201 - Disk: 1
. . .
D3 - 400  |  Page: 300 - Disk: 4


Hopefully this gives a clear picture of what I am trying to do. Any Help will be most appreciated.

Thanks again for your time and assistance.

Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
(Second try ... I just lost a detailed response due to mouse click error - just as well, since yu have provided new info)

Good job describing what you want. Here are some ideas that I think will help you solve it faster than you imagined:

(1) Whenever a cell in the Slot column is selected, you get a context menu option (Right-Click) "Pad Slot with '0's". This solves the sorting issue with slot. Just once does it for the entire column. Of course you have to save the changes at some point.

(2) To make the changes to Location / Slot, I have provided a set of 4 tools called Multi-Copy. With this tool, you can execute simple find/replace on a single column, you can execute a Regex expression on a full column, you can do a row-wise copy /paste / append / insert between two columns and other stuff. I suggest take a look and play with a few profiles to see if these can help. They are fast, so you can afford to try stuff and start over if you screw it up. Just don't save until you have visually validated the changes. Note that Regex probably has the ability to generate the modulo style arithmetic that you need to create the new page and disk numbers.

There are some other more complex options involving export / import of CSV, but before we go to that, let me know if you can use what I have already described. Just to summarize, you use Excel or CSV Export tool to create a CSV file with the headings Profile ID, Disc, Location, Slot, and them import using BulkEdit CSV Import. I think (not sure - CSV Import was not designed for this purpose) this would have the effect of updating the Location / Slot of existing profiles. Make sure you have a backup database, and give it a shot if you want. Just make sure the column titles are spelled exactly as the CSV Export tool makes them, or alternatively use Custom Import and map the fields manually.

(BTW, are you using LoadDVD to control your Sony changers? If so, there is a trick in there to make it automatically generate the location and slot based on collection number, so you don't have to program location and slot)

Thanks for all your time and dedication. I am venturing forward.

I have padded the Slot column but many records are still out of order. All of the "out of order" rows are highlighted (Row is tan with Slot column cell cyan). Nothing I seen to do changes this sort issue or clears the highlighting. Probably doing something wrong. I have a screen shot I could insert but I'm not sure how to as I have no access to a URL address to load it from (there's probably a simple way to do that to . . .).

Maybe you can tell me, is it possible to cause a secondary sort by click order on columns?

Perhaps sort is via columns left to right? I noticed the "Disc" column was causing issues so I moved it to after the Slot column and that seemed to fix that issue.

Next question: Is there a way to paste into a selected block in the BulkEdit sheet? I noticed ctrl-v does not work. That would make things much easier once I get the sort order dealt with ...

Do you have a Regex primer? I can't see a way to proceed replacing the Location or Slot data with the pattern I need via search & replace. You said that you thought Regex could possibly handle the replacement pattern I need ...

I don't want to impose too much on your valuable time! Again, thanks so much for all your help.