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Free Utilities

Import Assistant

The Import Assistant enables you to import volunteer and station data into the Reporter yourself. It is a Do-It-Yourself utility that you can use to import data from an existing database into the Volunteer Reporter. It is designed to help new users of the Volunteer Reporter get started by bringing in their existing data.

You can import data from either dBase (.dbf), Access (.mdb), Excel (.xls), or comma separated text (.csv) files. The Import Assistant is very easy to use and anyone can do it. We'll be glad to help out over the phone if you have any trouble using it.

The Import Assistant has some limitations:

  1. It overwrites any existing data in the Reporter. In other words, if you already have entered some data into the Reporter, that data will be deleted and lost if you use the Import Assistant.
  2. It only imports volunteer and station data, not placements or hours (except for lifetime hours).
  3. It does not import all data. It imports names, addresses, phones, emails, birth dates, emergency contacts, and lots of other data, but not everything. We expect that you will be able to import over 80% of your volunteer and station data, but not all.
  4. You must already have installed the Volunteer Reporter, version 5.4 or higher.

Download the Import Assistant (Import.exe) into the Reporter's program folder which is probably c:\reporter\program. After downloading, run Import.exe and follow the instructions.

The volunteer fields that you can import are: Volunteer Number, Salutation, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, First Street Address, Second Street Address, City, State, Zip, Home Phone, Work Phone, Cell Phone, Email, Comments and Notes, Starting Date, Termination Date, Birth Date, Sex, Person with Disability (Y/N), Driver's License, Driver's License Expiration, Social Security Number, Lifetime Hours, Emergency Contact (Relationship, Name, Street Address, City St Zip, First Phone, Second Phone), and Beneficiary (Relationship, Name, Street Address, City St Zip, First Phone, Second Phone).

The station fields that you can import are: Station Number, Station Name, Salutation, First Name of Station Supervisor, Middle Name, Last Name, First Street Address, Second Street Address, City, State, Zip, Phone, Fax, Cell Phone, Email, Web Address, Comments and Notes, Starting Date, Termination Date, and "Is this a health care facility?"

Fix Version 5.4

 Some people are having trouble with version 5.4 of the Volunteer Reporter. The problem seems to be caused by a security setting in Windows XP that prevents anyone except for an administrator to change data sets or performance settings. This utility fixes it so that you don't have to be logged in as an administrator to use the Reporter.

Running this utility fixes two problems. Both problems only happen if you are not logged in as an administrator. One is that you can't switch data sets. The other is that when you go into filters, you get an error about not enough file handles.

You must be logged in as an administrator to use this utility program.

Download this small utility program and run it once while logged in as an administrator. It only takes a second to run.

After running this, there is one final step. Start the Reporter and click on File | Preferences. Click on the Performance tab. Change the performance setting to any other setting and click on Ok, letting the Reporter restart. After the Reporter restarts, go back to the same Performance Settings and change it back to the recommended setting.





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