Importing From Word

[liresto]

I have the trial version and trying to present this product to my company. We have word files, pdfs, excel files etc in a knowledgebase that we wish to use with Flare. Mostly Word docs. I am having trouble importing word doc files. I mean they come in fine, yet I feel there must be a better way than the way I am doing it to import them. What I want to do is very simple.

There must be a better way to grab a whole bunch of files on a hard drive organized by their own directory structure and pull into this thing. Keeping that directory structure within FLARE in its TOC and content pane window.

I have several folders to import files from. I wish to keep the structure of the directory structure in TOC and contents pane. I have not found an efficient way to do this. Every time I import by File-->Import Project-->Import MS Documents, I try to import another folder but it only imports that folder of docs. If I use the "saved import data" option, it imports and processes all the files from the first import (which I need but don't need to wait again for the import process, feel this is inefficient) and in the final result, I have to rearrange all the files again in their respective folders. Both in contents pane and TOC. It shouldn't be this way.

Any suggestions from anyone will greatly be appreciated. I think the end result of FLARE and its deliverables are awesome, I just think there might be better ways of doing things I am not aware of and might be partly due to the learning curve of this product. Thank you in advance on any replies!

[lacastle]

Have you tried Project > Import File > Add MS Word Import File? They won't come in a certain directory structure, but they will each have their own TOC (and you can combine TOCs later easily).

Here's a link to good instructions for importing this way: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... f=5&t=6123

There is definitely a learning curve to Flare, but it's worth it! Welcome to the forums!

[liresto]

Thank you so much. You certainly pointed me in the right direction. There are still some things I'd like to do much easier but I'm getting there. Working with this program intensively, I've found some things that are very, very useful and others that I yet don't understand.

In building my 'knowledge base', I have found a few useful things. Since I'm really just trying to copy over a directory file structure that already exists, I have yet to find something that really just automatically imports all the word files into neat little folders. Each folder of course representing a directory. Furthermore, nested folders would also be included in such an automatic 'dream' function.

I have somewhat gotten a bit closer to what I need by using the Project > Import File > Add MS Word Import File. I've actually been right clicking on the Imports Folder in Project Organizer. That gives me a context menu where I quickly choose Add MS Word Import File. It is still consuming work, but not as bad as importing every file individually or creating the TOC manually and then linking files, creating folders in three places, etc. (The content pane, the nested folders in the content pane and the TOC editor.

I have also found something very useful. I was doing a search in help and found the automatic TOC generation to be helpful. I found out that you can first create the organization you need in the Content Pane, then just transfer that structure to the TOC editor just by clicking and dragging over. You have to click on the 'Show Files' icon above the content pane. That opens up another pane on the right, where you can shift select or ctrl select to your fancy and then drag and drop onto the TOC editor. This avoids having to create a TOC manually for all the nested folders, files, etc. I found this very useful. I guess I'll use it on my next project because this one's almost done. I have ten more to go....lol.

Finding this out, I figured I can almost do what I set out to do if I kind of work backwards. If I can only find a way to import into the contents pane the file structures of the directories I'm working with, I'll be closer to what would be a much easier transition between the file/folder structure on our server and the required structure in FLARE.