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Bento is essentially a flat-file database application although it does contain some basic relational functionality despite great efforts having been made to hiding the inner complexities from the user.

If the above sentence has left you scratching your head then you need to read this article because it will explain what a database is, what a flat-file database is and what relational functionality is.
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If you are new to databases then the whole area of fields, records, tables and forms in Bento Libraries may be somewhat confusing, especially understanding how forms relate to fields and records. The short video, below, will hopefully help to visually explain this. Read more

As of Bento 1.0v2, it appears that when you export data the CSV file may not be properly formed if any of your fields contain one or more double-quotes. The CSV file format allows for each field to be surrounded by double-quotes and to avoid confusion with these, any double-quotes which appear in a field are doubled-up. In Bento’s case, the issue seems to be that for each double-quote in the field, the closing double-quote is moved one character to the left.

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The Bento User Guide is available from within Bento via the Help menu as a PDF document. As of version 1.0v2 of Bento it is 100 pages long and, although I would not suggest reading it from cover to cover, it is worth skimming through it to familiarise yourself with it as it contains a lot of useful information and tips which you may otherwise miss.

Unfortunately there is no printed version available, even in the boxed version. If you want to print your own version but would like to reduce the paper usage, remember that you can always go to the ‘Layout’ print settings and change the number of pages per sheet and two pages per sheet is still readable as long as you have reasonable eyesight or glasses.

One of the areas which seems to cause the most confusion for Bento users is that of Related Records Lists. I am therefore delighted to say that I have written a guide to them which will hopefully explain what they can do, when they should be used, and how they are used.

The guide was meant to be fairly comprehensive but also fairly concise but the number of screenshots involved in making it a good visual guide meant that it quickly evolved into a fairly lengthy document so it will initially be released as a PDF and I will try to break it up into a series of actual articles over the next few days.

Comments and suggestions are, as ever, most welcome.

Download the Related Records Lists Guide.

I am delighted to announce that Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline has very kindly decided to make part one of his excellent two-part Bento screencast available for free and is offering a 20% discount off the membership fee of ScreenCastsOnline if you use the promotional code BENTO.

Part one of the screencast covers the following topics:

• Introduction to Bento
• The Bento Interface
• Core Concepts - Libraries and Collections
• Address Book Integration
• Records & Table View
• Form Views
• Creating a Library
• Adding Fields
• Form Customisation
• Themes
• Advanced Find
• Smart Collections

The topics covered in part two include:

• iCal Event and Task Integration
• How you might use iCal integration
• Additional Bento Fields
• Printing Tables and Forms
• Creating Mailing Labels
• How to import Data into Bento
• Backing up Your Data

ScreenCastsOnline is a weekly video podcast with a new Mac related tutorial published every week via iTunes. A full six month membership costs only $39 with the special discount coupon code allowing you to receive the next 26 brand new weekly shows. In addition, membership gives you immediate access to over 140+ HD tutorials featuring many different Mac related software tutorials including the second part of the Bento tutorial. For more information on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member visit www.screencastsonline.com/extra and don’t forget to use the code BENTO.

The first Bento tutorial is available as a QuickTime MOV file which you can download or watch in your web browser below. Click on the small monitor icon to view the tutorial full screen.

The Bento Database Manager is a simple utility which allows you to manage multiple Bento database files more easily than you can by hand. It has been written using AppleScript and the source script is included in the download file along with an application file and a PDF user guide. The application file can be placed anywhere but your Applications folder is as good a place as any.

Please read the user guide before using the Bento Database Manager and please take special note of the various disclaimers!

Download the Bento Database Manager

Bento appears to use a single data file to store your Libraries and this file is called bento.bentodb and is stored in your user’s Library/Application Support/Bento folder. If you look at the details of this file via, for example, Get Info’ then you may notice that the Modified date is not the same as the date when you last used Bento, This is because the bento.bentodb file is actually a Bundle which is essentially a folder which containing other files and folders but appears to be a single file. Within this bundle there is a file called ‘database’ and this is the file that is updated every time you use Bento.

You may wonder how Time Machine handles the bento.bentodb file considering that it doesn’t appear change but Time Machine is clever enough to work out that the contents of the bundle have changed and will therefore back it up as it would any other changed file.

Bento™ can make use of iCal and Address Book data and this is one of the strengths and selling points of the application. However this area could do with some additional explanation as there are some potential issues which you should be aware of.
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