Forum Discussion

MikeTamoush's avatar
MikeTamoush
Qrew Commander
2 years ago

Extract data from CSV in file attachment field

Is there a native way (Perhaps with pipelines?) to extract data from an Excel file that is uploaded to a file attachment field? I know that Juiced has an add-on for this, which I may use, but if th...
PrashantMaheshw's avatar
PrashantMaheshw
Qrew Captain
You can consider a connected table (or pipeline) perhaps ? If you have a CSV instead of uploading it into QuickBase , you can upload it in Google Drive ,Dropbox , and let QuickBase sync it from there

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Prashant Maheshwari
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MikeTamoush's avatar
MikeTamoush
Qrew Commander
2 years ago
Unfortunately I cannot use a connected table as the CSV I get in my email is not formatted correctly. However, I can get an xlsx file formatted appropriately. I could manually save this as a CSV then use a Sync, but then that involves a manual process. I'm thinking to fully automate I can use Pipelines to take a file attachment from an email and upload it to a table. If I can get the data out of that, then I can fully automate.

Or even better, if Sync worked with an xlsx file!

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Mike Tamoush
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  • PrashantMaheshw's avatar
    PrashantMaheshw
    Qrew Captain
    2 years ago
    There are tonnes of solution available I believe which will be able to help you to convert your xlsx to csv in an automated manner. If attachments are coming in email from a erp or bank or some other software, they almost always will have solution for csv as well. 

    Here are few I found from Google Search

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5256733/convert-xlsx-file-to-csv-using-batch
    https://github.com/dilshod/xlsx2csv

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    Time for a story


    Few years back I had used a super convoluted solution where emails were downloaded automated by using TheBat! email client (on Windows) which allows to save all attachment in a folder, then on MacOSX using Hazel(app), will use a command line tool would scan the files to csv , Hazel (app) would then move it to GDrive. 

    It worked for few months (but would require constant tweaks every week).

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    Prashant Maheshwari
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    • MikeTamoush's avatar
      MikeTamoush
      Qrew Commander
      2 years ago
      Thanks!

      Yeah, ive poured through dozens of possible solutions, even had meetings with consultants to try to automate that conversion. Everything takes a level of programming knowledge above my expertise level. I was hoping I could use native QB functions because it does not require code. But I think I will either need to hire a coder, or more likely, utilize the Juiced Add-on.

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      Mike Tamoush
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