Specimen records may be added to your database by importing data from another Compleat Botanica database or from a general purpose database that supports delimited files.  A delimited file is sometimes referred to in general terms as an ASCII file.  Delimited files follow these three rules:  1) they have one line of text per specimen record, 2) each line of text is broken into columns where either a tab or a comma separates each column, and 3) the first line of text contains the names of the columns and subsequent lines contain the records.

The import process can check for duplicate entries in the database and can proceed in one of four ways: duplicates can be merged with the existing record, they can be skipped entirely, they can be replaced entirely, or they can be created without regard to the existing record.  Duplicates are determined by matching import records to existing records based on either the botanical name or the specimen number.

To understand how the data files are processed, what the column names are, and what special formatting rules apply to each column, refer to the documents for each individual column. See the Alphabetical index to column specifications.

To see snapshots of the screens you will encounter during the import process, see the documents:

• Steps for importing specimen from XML files

• Steps for importing specimen from delimited files