Let me repeat the most recent issue:
Before you migrate from Mobile Me to iCloud or otherwise turn on on iCloud,
do this:
Make sure you have Bento 4.06
Launch it.
Quit Bento.

After that, you should be ready to surf the new Clouds.

Since Mobile Me will be available until June 30, 2012, I personally am not in a hurry to get OSX Lion and iCloud. But since there are very few issues which have been reported in the Bento forums, I have to assume that Bento is generally ready for the transition. That doesn’t mean that the problems reported here on BentoUsers are not real. But they are not the norm, but rather horrible bad luck.
Still, let’s all keep our eyes and ears open…

So today I would publicly like to offer my bilingual iChat services (English or German). If you’re stuck with Bento or any project, just leave a comment here and I’ll email you to set up an online meeting.

Most important tip:
don’t just import a Template into your main (maybe only) database file!
For this purpose I keep a “fresh” Bento 3 database file on hand, in my Bento back-up folder. Then I save (back up) my current data and revert to the fresh database. Then I import the Template. Since I’m not using any Address Book Collections, I don’t have to worry about them. If you are using Collections (Groups), then make a list of them first, so you can check which new ones are added during import.

If you don’t have a fresh Bento database file, here is how to create one:
back up your current database file, quit Bento. Find the main database file at: user/library/application support/bento. Delete the bento.bentodb file. Re-start Bento; a fresh database file is automatically created. Now back up that file and call it “Freshbento3Data” or something similar. Now you can revert to a fresh database file any time you need to.

After you import a Template into a fresh Bento database file, check for strange Collections in Address Book and iCal. After you make sure which ones might be used by the Template, delete the stray Collections. Same goes for Forms.
In addition, you might get all Address Book/iCal Fields from the creator’s Bento. It’s too much work to deal with that issue in detail, just don’t be surprised if you run into some strange Field names once in a while…

Now you can re-export the cleaner Template and import it into your main database or any sub-set you’re using.

Happy templating…

Recently I received a Template for evaluation that included a Smart Collection from Address Book. The author chose to include Address Book as a Related Library. To do that you just have to click a check box in the “export Template” dialog. The result was that I got all of his 39 Address Book Collections in the bargain! That also means that 39 new groups were created in Mac Address Book!
As described in my article Unexpected Template Behavior Bento can’t make the distinction if you just have a Related Data field of one Address Book Collection in your Template. It includes all Forms and Collections!

Since I know now for a fact that the Bento team won’t fix this bug for the time being, here are some tips and workarounds:
Whenever you can, don’t include Address Book or iCal Libraries in your Template, so you don’t run into this problem at all. In other words, don’t check anything in the “include these related libraries” box (template export dialog). Your Related Data Fields will still be there, the user of the Template just has to create the iCal/Address Book Collections himself. Simply include a Form called “Template Notes” or similar, where you explain what the user has to do to make the Template complete, for example the exact criteria for a Smart Collection. While you’re at it, include a description and other usage notes on that Form, like we do here at our download pages at BentoUsers. Many users will appreciate that, especially the novices who rely on downloading Templates.

There are some exceptions. If your (Related Data-) Address Book Collection uses custom Fields and/or a special custom Form, you should include Address Book as a Related Library. To make it easy for the user who downloads such a template, here are some tips to “clean” it up before exporting it:

When you’re done with your Template, make a backup of your Bento data. If you have several unrelated Address Book Collections (like many people), also make an archive of your contact file in Mac Address Book.
Now you can start cleaning: delete all Mac Address Book groups that are not part of your Bento Template (it’s easier to do this in Mac Address Book because you can delete the whole batch at once). Next delete all Forms from Bento Address Book that are not relevant to your Template, from the main Library and the Collection(s). Note that every Library and Collection has to have at least one Form. So just leave any one Form in the main Library. You could even name it “delete me.”

Now your Template is ready for export! All the user (importer) has to do is delete one Form from his main Address Book library (the “delete me” Form). Finally, you can restore your Mac Address Book and your Bento data from the archive/backup you made earlier.

Another case I ran into myself a few times is the desire to export the Template of a single iCal Collection. An example is the Cross Country Template of my daughter’s running races. Since Bento doesn’t allow you to export a single Collection, you have to do more cleaning up first. It’s slightly simpler because Bento’s iCal Collections don’t affect the Mac iCal application. So all you have to do is backing up your Bento data and then delete all other Collections and irrelevant Forms. Again you have to leave one Form in the main iCal Library.

There you are! Next month we’ll talk a little bit about importing “dirty” templates.

More bad news today…

Be careful when downloading templates from the Bento Template Exchange at Filemaker. Apparently, they accept most templates without checking them out first. Many are designed very poorly, some are even corrupt. Also, inexperienced users in the forums complain, because they don’t even know how to use the templates without instructions.

We don’t have that many templates here on our site, but our quality control and service is included:
I will not publish a template without testing it first and improving it, if necessary.
Secondly, every template will be described as to its features and usage and will include original-size screen shots.
Finally, you can always leave comments, especially useful for any open questions.

Tip: remember, a template is only a starting point. Your exact personal needs might be different. So read the user’s guide to help you modifying a template.

I’m calling out to any other user, starting with my friends Dan and Barb, you know yourselves, how wonderful you are! I do appreciate the templates users have contributed. Keep them coming! But now I’m also looking for (regular?!) contributors. It could be a weekly column, the occasional tip or trick, special usage ideas, workarounds… pretty much anything. Even just someone who scours through the posts and leaves some comments on a regular basis. Point out the errors of my ways, make suggestions!

I hope I gave you some starting thoughts how to help out. Come out of the woodworks, get famous and help change the (Bento) world!

Thanks for listening…

Yours Truly, Lonesome Florian.

Whether you’re new to Mac or a database expert, join us for an overview of the newest version of the wildly popular personal database from FileMaker, Bento 2.

If you’re using Address Book and iCal to manage your contacts and calendar, see how Bento can bring them together. Learn how to make the most of the lists you’re storing in spreadsheets like Excel and Numbers. Or, if you’re ready to start organizing your busy life starting from scratch, we’ll show you how Bento can you help do it – the easy way!

Register today as space is limited.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009; 8:00-9:00 a.m. Pacific, 11:00-noon Eastern

Tuesday, March 24, 2009; 11:00-noon Pacific, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Eastern

Where: On your computer over the Internet

HOW TO REGISTER
When you come to the registration page, click the “Register” link next to “Event Status” or at the bottom of your screen and enter your contact information. After your registration is accepted, you will be sent an email with the necessary event participation information, which will take place over your computer.

To use, simply download the QuickPick, unzip the file and then place the unzipped file into either the /Library/Application Support/Backup/QuickPicks/ folder or the ~/Library/Application Support/Backup/QuickPicks/ folder.

The file can be downloaded from here.

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.

Flat-File Databases
A database is a store of information. The data is stored in tables and categorised by fields. Each group of information is a record. Consider an address book. The address book itself is a table. The categories in the address book are fields (name, address, phone number, etc.). Each entry in the address book is a record.

An address book may have tabs for each letter of the alphabet so that you can find the person you are looking for quickly and easily. A database can be searched or queried to find the data required. Because data is generally retrieved via a query, the data itself does not need to be entered in any particular order.

The type of database described above is called a flat-file database. This is because it is like a single sheet of paper with all the information on it.

Relational Databases
Explaining what a relational database is is best done by example so assume that you are running a mail-order service and you want to keep track of sales to customers. Essentially you want to store the following information:

• Customer Information: name, address, phone number
• Orders: product, quantity, price, customer
• Product Information: product, description, price, supplier
• Suppliers: name, address, phone number, products supplied

In a flat file database you would need to have a number of tables (two to be exact), each of which holds one set of information. One table would hold information about customers and their orders whilst the second would hold information about suppliers and their products. This is viable if each customer only orders one item and each supplier only makes one product which is a very unlikely scenario.

In reality each table would store a large amount of duplicate information, each order would entail the re-entry of all of the customer’s details. At some point a typing error is likely to occur, for example a customer’s name is incorrectly typed. Now, if you try to look at all the products ordered by a customer you will miss some because of the typing error. In addition, if a customer moves house then you will have to face a lot of typing to update all of the records. Finally, the huge amount of duplicate information takes up disk space, computer memory and will slow down the system.

Now consider the situation where you have a table containing each customer’s details and only one record for each customer. You also have a table containing each order made. Assume that you give each customer a reference number (because customers could share the same surname) and against each order you enter that reference number. You can now relate a customer to an order and if a customer’s details change then you only have to change one record in the customers’ table. Much neater and much more efficient.

A relational database will provide a link between these two table so that you can create a query which will show you the products ordered by each customer.

The same principle can be applied to suppliers and products.

Finally, a link can be made between the orders and the products (via a product reference number) so that a change in the details of a product will be picked up in the orders.

Therefore a relational database saves typing, reduces the potential for errors, reduces the size of a database and makes for much more flexible data management.

Bento: Sitting In The Middle
Bento sits somewhere between a flat-file and a relational database. All of the databases, or Libraries as they are called in Bento, are really flat-file databases and they use one table of data. However it is possible to create some basic relational database functionality via the Related Records Field which is covered in its own article.

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Download this video at 800×600 (5.7 MB)

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To solve this I have created an AppleScript which will re-process an exported CSV file and will attempt to re-position the closing quote in the correct position.

Click for a Larger View

Unfortunately there is a restriction which is that your Library should only have one field which contains double-quotes. If you have double-quotes in more than one field then you should probably wait for an official fix.

In addition, before you export your data you need to add a new field to your Library so that the script can find the end of each record. This filed should contain a single character and this character should not appear in the text of any of your fields. This is most easily achieved via a Calculation field:

Click for a Larger View

The name of the field is irrelevant. but in the above screenshot it is called ‘EOR’ which is short for ‘End of Record’ and I have used the pipe ( | ) character to identify the end of each record.

Once you have exported your CSV file you need to process it using the Double Quote Fixer script. Simply double-click on the Double Quote Fixer file (downloadable below) which will open the file in an application called Script Editor.

Click for a Larger View

Just below the grey comments you will find some configuration settings which you may like to change.

Click for a Larger View

• Remove_Carriage_Returns will strip out any carriage returns. This can be useful if you are, for example, processing text which will be imported into something else which does not handle multi-line CSV records well. The setting should either be true or false.
• Record_Delimiter is the character you used in the record delimiter field as described above.
• Double_Quote_Symbol is a symbol which the carriage returns will be replaced with temporarily. If you use this character in your text you need to change it to something else.
• Double_Quote_Opening_Closing_Symbol is another symbol which is used to temporarily replace carriage returns. Again, if you use this character in your text you need to change it to something else.

No not change the New_Line_Character.

Now you can run the script via the Run button in the toolbar or the Run command in the Script menu. You will be asked to select the original export file and then when it has been processed you will be asked where the fixed file should be saved.

Please note that the process can take a while is your CSV file is large so please be patient.

Download the Double Quote Fixer.

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.

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