Export to external formats

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Guys,

As many of you will be aware, PGO has no export to external format e.g. Word, RTF, Excel, etc.

Dan & I are discussing introducing such a facility but we are unsure of what exactly it is people need to do with PGO data externally.

If you can use this thread to tell us what you're doing & how you would want an 'export to external' function to work, we would be grateful.

Thanks,

Wilson.

[prochargedmopar]

Wow,
Seems like forever since I used this program.
Had to be somewhere in the early 2000's.
And you guys are still going at it!

[GMac999]

I would prefer a text editor of some type, word/rtf/notepad.  A lot of conversations extend over many emails.  The groups I'm in have you trim your posts, so the only way to get all the suggestions is through cut and paste.

[BigGuy]

This would be an extremely welcomed feature.

I think any of the formats mentioned Word, RTF, Excel all would be excellent.  But perhaps a simple and universal format such as plain text would be more useful for the purpose of archiving messages for reference which is my main need.

If I had to pick only one format it would probably be plain text.  My second choice would be Excel.  The first is efficient for quick and simple archiving and the second a good way to separate fields for database needs.

Of course all of these deal with the messages themselves and not attachments, or other sections of the groups such as files.  If included in the export facility I think they would have to be exported separately as storing embeded files in any of these formats (the ones that may be able to even do that) is likely not a good solution.

Having a link field to files in Excel and throwing the files into a folder on export would be super cool.   :D

Thank you for seeking input!

[casstk]

We use the export feature to summarize answers, recommendations and suggestions, so RTF and TXT would be important. The ability to import the messages into another email program would even be more helpful because that would give us access to many other functions, but we understand if that is not possible for now (or ever).

[danb]

We use the export feature to summarize answers, recommendations and suggestions, so RTF and TXT would be important. The ability to import the messages into another email program would even be more helpful because that would give us access to many other functions, but we understand if that is not possible for now (or ever).

What specific functions would an email program provide that PG4 lacks?  Trying to determine if it would be easier to build those features into PG4 versus building the export piece to an email app.

[john13598]

I would love to see the messages reformatted into html format where I can display the message history on my website. Now, I suppose you could make it word compatible (as a .doc file and not a .docx file) and then it can be saved in html format. Also it would be nice if one could strip out all of the advertising and stuff that is in the messages that are not relevant to the actual content of the message itelf (for example yahoo stuff and the like). I have sample files that I have been working on to reformat them into something that I can put up on my website and allow users to search for information that they might need. There are a total of 8200+ messages starting at message 1, the day of inception of the group.

By the way, I have to thank you guys for supplying such a nice tool. It is a life saver for our group. Your support is also the best too. Thank you so much for continuing your work on this nice tool.

[stonehollow]

I would prefer Excel CSV (comma delimited) - that way you get both a "simple" text file and Excel capability if desired.  I mostly want it for a backup in case Yahoo! decides to go away, or if the group wants to move somewhere else.

[Denos]

Greetings Wilson and others. I too have been using PGO for years and miss it when Yahoo changes format.
For my several lists what I try to do regularly  is post:

Statistics about who took part in a given discussion thread. Who posted, initiated etc.
I love the digest function - when it works.


I guess the ability to export easily to WORD would help greatly.

Dennis aka Denos

[Gasmann]

An export function may be useful now and then. I would prefer the CSV or perhaps RTF format, not .doc or .docx. In Europe many people use other text-editors which are better and cheaper than MS Word.
IMHO improving PGO's search functions would be more useful.

[tcr]

For me the "problem" I would try to solve is one of integrating email archives from various sources. As background, I manage a community association with around 850 users whose email addresses include around 150 domains -- I don't know how many independent ISPs and mail servers. They use many different mail readers/composers on many different devices (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, etc.). Many don't even have (or want) Yahoo accounts. To make matters more complicated, we used Yahoo for 13 years and recently moved to Google because changing Yahoo policies made it much harder to manage such a large group. These providers have their own business models and are not particularly interested in allowing users to merge information across vendors.

So, when a user asks, "where do I find a good plumber for kitchen repairs?, "What is the latest El Niño forecast for the coming winter?", etc., answers have to be collected, often from archives, and merged from diverse sources. PGO itself is very powerful for accessing, searching, and digesting Yahoo group email material -- and you guys are to be commended for such a rich, well-designed, and high-performance tool. However, it stands as one part of a whole and the "export" feature for me would allow merging PGO results with results from other email, web, db, etc. sources.

I think the ability to export individual messages as (a) simple text or (b) HTML-tagged text and (c) as HTML-formatted .eml files would be great -- other common email file formats would likely also be useful. I think the ability to export digests derived from PGO searches similarly would be very useful. Generally HTML can be imported into Word and Excel if needed. I personally use Thunderbird with IMAP access to my email services and these have nice ways to do simple editing and merging. I also use EMACS as a text editor, which is very powerful to edit special formats (like HTML) with user-defined macros and E-Lisp functions.

In the grandest long-term view, PGO might become a way to integrate and manage diverse collections of structured texts (email being a very important example) across different sources and specialties.

Tom Rindfleisch

[t2000kw]

Wilson,

If you want to cover the most bases with the lowest amount of work involved, an export to a comma delimited file would work with almost all spreadsheet software. While I use Excel and get MS Office through my workplace through a Microsoft Employee Purchase Program for about $10, not everyone has Excel. But OpenOffice, ApacheOffice, and LibreOffice all are free and have a spreadsheet program as part of their suites.

For me, Excel would be best, but I can get by with the simpler almost universal comma delimited (separated) format (.csv files). That would allow anyone to use the file as a database of sorts, much more powerful than a word processor file.

If you also add a word processor format, keep in mind that the older .doc format can be read by the free office suites and MS Word as well. Also, RTF is almost universal, too.

Which would be preferred will no doubt depend on how many columns of data you have to export and import. A word processor file would only likely be useful for a limited number of columns and characters, even in landscape mode. A spreadsheet would be useful for any number of columns or characters your program could possibly export.

I believe you can already import the data file into MS Access. If so, it might be able to be imported into the free office suites as a database file. Not sure on that as databases are not my strong suit, though I can set up simple ones.

If you need a vote, CSV (comma delimited (or comma separated) values) would get my vote since everyone could have access to it with the free office suites available. Even those of us using Excel can easily import a CSV file into the program.

It's been a while since I've had a need to use PGO, but now that Yahoo keeps us from downloading a member list of more than the first 1,000 members, will yours handle the full number of members? If I remember, the way it works, it should.

Donald

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Donald,

Not sure on that number of members thing. I'm currently locked out so I can't test it.

Will let you know tomorrow.

Cheers,

Wilson.

[danb]

Thanks for all the good info everyone.

So if we could to CSV and possibly .eml we might cover most needs. 

For CSV, since the message content is HTML I think I would store the HTML as an encoded string (solves the problem of commas) and Excel users would need to have a function in Excel to decode, which shouldn't be a big deal.

For .eml, the only potential problem is that Yahoo does not provide the full email address for message and it is truncated.  So some email programs might balk at 'bad' email addresses.

Possibly an export to individual html files might be useful for some?

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Dan,

Just a small point on the hex coded string issue. I've been contacted by a PGO user trying to convert the PGO Message Content from hex string to ASCII and I thought it'd be easy in Excel.

Not so much. It'll certainly need a bit of VB or something to plugin.

I did find a proposed solution (an Excel macro) but users reported that it did not work.

Maybe my Google-fu isn't up to the job but I couldn't find a working macro for Excel to do this.

BTW what about Pipe (|) separated values. Yes, I know commas are more normal but all you have to do is tell Excel what value you're using as a separator and hey presto.


Cheers,

Wilson.