Shelfarians discussion
I DID THAT! Script to convert csv to GR friendly format
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Note, if your shelves blow up as all tags from Shelfari become shelves... plus I added a couple as well... never fear...Use EDIT Shelves to quickly get rid of what you don't want. Or rename.
Cheers!
Wow.. I am trying to fix my private notes...the commas mess up my import everywhere...here, leafmarks, and library thing...
Right? ?!! That's pretty much the primary thing my tool does to fix things. 2nd is to push data into columns that GR will accept. If you want, i can have a go at seeing if GR will accept the private notes column now. I didn't revisit that after I finally got reviews to pass properly.
I would love to have the private notes fixed!!! I noticed the commas in titles don't affect anything as they are contained in quote marks. I know next to nothing about computer script and what you have done. I did ask a friend in the computer field about my dilemma, because I had experimented a lot importing to leafmarks last year, figuring out that commas in the title before a book in my import list messed up the next. (I think shelfari fixed that with the quote marks?)He said commas should be the only thing...but I had some other characters mess up in my tags, which I have been trying to change/fix some of...that there should be an "LF" or some other type character at the end?
I also have lots of characters in my tags...which are "a whole nother" headache...some never show up...it seems slashes (\) somehow affect things...
I probably got frustrated and threw my file out. Can I still go on Shelfari and try this again? I'd love to find a way to get my lost reviews back. I feel extremely sad about it.
Yep. The script is still there. I didn't test if it'll change things like "date-added" but it should at the minimum fill in missing data.
The script makes the assumption that the bulk of the books have not yet been added to your GR. Which is why I didn't get around to testing exactly what it'll update if a book data is already there in part.
But just to be safe, export your GR data first.
Every field that comes in from the script is put in a shelf: "from shelfari". If there's any question about an overlapping book, you can open gr csv in excel and search for the ISBN to get the right row.
Oh boy, this is probably going to sound like Greek to you.
Yup Greek! But I'm going to try it for the 5th time and see what happens. Sorry for all the new old reviews that are about to get posted…..
Export your GR data first. You can do it from the same page where you import files. If it doesn't merge well, you can dump your shelves and restore from the GR csv
Just did it. Exported again to myself as a csv file, and also to Goodreads! We'll see if it helps. But then at least I'll have the file and I can bother goodreads about it. The last one opened as garble, but I guess they know what to do with it....
If you didn't run it through my script, GR is going to barf on the direct file from Shelfari. Because of the commas above all else. That's why very few reviews make it across successfully.
OK - what? I may need a phone number. I'm back to Greek. I have to run something through your script? I may need you to talk me through this. Is that a possibility? That you would be generous enough to spare a few minutes for a fellow reader who is lost in the tech world? I'm only 47, and quite hip in other ways. Maybe I could send you an amazon card as a thank you - for more books!
But....
Here you go: http://megalion.org/shelf
I've run my and Alison D's library.csv files through the script over and over. The converted csvs now import perfectly. I created a test GR account and imported there to test.
Another way to spot check, especially since there's no easy visual clue if review was imported, export your data from GR, scan the csv. Especially near the bottom of the file, Do you see reviews where expected?
I ended up skipping some of the extra fields like Private Notes because I was running into enough things getting the basics done.
IF You've ALREADY tried to manually copy stuff over, you can still use this script to try to catch anything you missed. How I would do it: export your current GR, make test GR account. Import that csv first. Now you have a safe place to test without impacting your actual account.
Import the converted Shelfari csvs. Export GR again. Spot check and compare lines from GR export 1 & 2. If you're satisfied that importing the converted csvs was useful and didn't muck up your existing data, go back to your account, import the converted csvs there.
Done!
Hope this helps you guys. Let me know how it works, and ESPECIALLY if you encounter any problems.
Assuming it works for people, feel free to pass the url around. Share the relief!