Microsoft KB Archive/228537

= OFF98: Contents of the Microsoft Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer Read Me File =

Article ID: 228537

Article Last Modified on 10/2/2002

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office 98 for Macintosh

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This article was previously published under Q228537



SUMMARY
The Microsoft Office 98 FileMaker Pro Importer contains a readme file describing the system requirements for the importer and some known issues. This article contains the contents of the readme file.



MORE INFORMATION
MICROSOFT OFFICE 98-FILEMAKER PRO IMPORTER READ ME FILE

Version 1.0

(c) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This document provides installation and other information about the FileMaker¨ Pro Importer for Office 98. This software is provided 'as is'. Please refer to the End User License Agreement for more information.

________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS

INSTALLING FILEMAKER TOOLS Installation Instructions File Locations Minimum System Requirements KNOWN ISSUES TECHNICAL COMMENTS

________________________________________________________________ INSTALLING FILEMAKER TOOLS

Installation Instructions - The Office 98-FileMaker Pro Setup is an archive file that is a compressed installer application which has been encoded as a Binhex or MacBinary document. To Install this product, download either the Office 98-FileMaker Pro.hqx or the Office 98-FileMaker Pro.bin to your local hard drive. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0 or greater to download the file, it will automatically decompress the file. Otherwise, you can use a third-party decompression utility, such as Stuffit Expanderª or MindExpanderª.

After the archive file has been decompressed, the setup program will try to install the files as noted below.

IMPORTANT After running the setup program, to use the Excel FileMaker Import Tool the following additional steps must be taken.

1. Launch Excel. 2. From the Tools Menu, select Add-Ins. 3. In the Add-ins dialog check the box next to the Excel FileMaker Pro Import Item. 4. Click 'Ok'

Important: Users working with non-English versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel may have to move the files manually to the locations specified below.

File Locations - Note that the exact location of the Microsoft Office folder can vary and is determined when Microsoft Office 98 is installed.

Microsoft Excel Related Files

The following files and folders are installed for Microsoft Excel: - Microsoft Office 98:Office:Excel Add-ins:Excel FileMaker Pro Importer - Microsoft Office 98:Office:Excel Add-ins:Excel FileMaker Pro Scripts - Get All Fields - Import - Find - Open Database - Microsoft Office 98:Readme:FileMaker Add-Ins Read Me

Microsoft Word Related Files

The following files and folders are installed for Microsoft Word: - Microsoft Office 98:Office:Startup:Word:Word FileMaker Pro Import - Microsoft Office 98:Office:Startup:Word:Word FileMaker Pro Scripts - Get All Fields - Import - Find - Open Database - Microsoft Office 98:Readme:FileMaker Add-Ins Read Me

Minimum System Requirements --

To install the Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer, you need:

* A PowerPC based processor. * Mac OS 7.5 or later with AppleScript installed. * 1 MB of hard disk space for each add-in that you want to install. * Microsoft Word and/or Microsoft Excel 98. * FileMaker version 3.0 or 4.0

To use the Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer, it is *recommended* that you have:

* A PowerPC processor with a clock speed of at least 120 MHz. * Mac OS 8.5 or later. * An additional 1 MB of memory allocated to both Word and Excel.

Important: Version 8.5 of the system software introduces substantial performance improvements to AppleScript, which is utilized by the add-ins. Using Mac OS 8.5 will allow the add-ins to operate much faster, especially when importing large amounts of data.

________________________________________________________________ KNOWN ISSUES

With this release of the Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer there are several known issues. Please refer to the enclosed End User License Agreement (EULA) before using this beta software.

After performing a Mail Merge in Microsoft Word the data source can normally be changed by selecting the edit button in the Mail Merge Helper dialog. This functionality is not currently supported in the Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer. To change the data source to another FileMaker Pro database, choose Mail Merge from Filemaker... from the Tools menu. This will change the data source without changing the main document.

On some machines, when importing a database into Excel that contains ten records and ten fields may cause a single field deliminator to be dropped. This results in the data being imported incorrectly.

In some situations, if the normal launch of FileMaker is interrupted the Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer may not be able to continue successfully. An example of why the launch process might halt would be if two copies of FileMaker with the same serial number are started up on different machines on the network.

When importing a FileMaker database that contains text fields with very large amounts of data, not all of the data may be correctly imported to Excel.

If FileMaker is quit or crashes in the middle of returning data to Excel or Word, unpredictable results may occur. Excel or Word may crash or return inaccurate data.

If FileMaker is running but has a dialog box open, such as the "New Database" dialog using the Importer may cause Word or Excel to crash.

When returning data from a database that contails repeating fields, if the data set to be returned contains only a single record, the information returned may be inaccurate.

________________________________________________________________ TECHNICAL COMMENTS

The Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer were also designed to be a technology demonstration of what can be done using AppleScriptª and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications. These two technologies together provide powerful tools for creating integrated solutions. These two technologies are also within the reach of a larger number of users than traditional programming techniques. These tools show that it is possible to create a powerful solution to a business need without having to use third party software.

The Office 98-FileMaker Pro Importer may suffer performance degradation when used with very large database files. The inclusion of numerous fields tends to have a greater effect on performance than would normally be expected. Increasing the memory size of each application and the size of the disk cache can sometimes improve performance. Importing less that 20 fields of data at one time can also improve performance. In some ways this performance behavior is not entirely unexpected because of the design approach used.

Additional query words: OFF98

Keywords: kbinfo KB228537

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