Importing/Exporting MKL

Manual: page 124 (v6), page 204 (v5)

MKL import/export: Catalog Administration dialog (Ctrl+Shift+J - v6; Ctrl+H - v5) -> 'Keywording' tab -> 'Import' button. Access to the Catalog Administration dialog is only available when you have Administrator level access.

For all catalogue keywords, export only: Catalog Properties dialog, Statistics Tab, 'Save Keywords to File' button. If greyed out, click the 'Calculate Now' button first. The Catalog Properties dialog is available to all levels of access. This latter method can be used to create an MKL from your existing keywords that may have been manually entered or extracted from file metadata. You can optionally open the text file in Notepad/TextEdit or Word and edit the list before importing it as an MKL.

To create an MKL, using Word, in a correct format to import to Portfolio follow these steps:

1. Open a new Word doc.
2. Type or paste in a list of keywords.
3. There should be only one keyword per line, though a keywords can be more than one word (i.e. "cat" vs. "big cat").
4. Ensure there is a line return after the last keyword (hint: you should be a able to move the cursor on to the line below the last item).
5. Check the list for typos and that you're ready to save.
6. Choose menu File / Save As.
7. In the save dialog, open the lower drop-don list and change from the default "Word Document (*.doc)" to "Text Only (*.txt)" and save the file. Note: do not use the "Text with line breaks (*.txt)".
8. Close Word.
9. Open your catalogue in admin mode and select menu Catalog / Administration.
10. Select the Keywording tab and click the Import button.
11. In the dialog navigate to where you stored your text file, select it and click the Open button.
12. Your list is imported and as a success check should now appear in the listbox on the left side of Keywords tab.
13. Close the Administration dialog, you have finished the import.
14. Use the Master Keyword List in any of the usual places in the Catalogue (MKL palette, item properties, etc.)

As you may guess, exported lists are saved as text files (.txt on PCs). You can always open such a file in Word to, for instance, correct spellings. If you are exporting to file for the purpose of checking/maintaining a list do remember to save the results in the correct format for re-import - as described above.

It is important to note that Portfolio does not retrospectively find and fix altered keywords. You will need to make a note of all the corrections you make in the exported list. A good way to do this is to make two copies of the exported list and in the second is to delete all the keywords that don't need amending and append after each remaining bad spelling the correct one to be used. You might find it easier/quicker, depending on list size and number of errors, to cut paste the 'bad' values to a second bank text file adding the correct value after, as before.

Anyway, why the second list? Assume you have your catalogue set to only use words from the MKL (set via Catalog Administration dialog), then you won't be able to correct existing values until you've corrected the MKL and re-imported it. Now, without the second list you won't know what the 'bad' values are you need to correct. With the second list you can find and then update the bad values to their corrected versions (which will now be allowed even with strict MKL usage). Do you now see how strict MKL use may stop you adding incorrect new words but won't affect existing (bad) values?

To correct your old values (read this and the next section if you parse multi-word keywords):

1. Open your list of 'bad' values.
2. Open the catalogue and open the Find dialog and set it to search on Keywords & "start with" (usually the default).
3. Click the Find All button.
4. Copy the first bad value into the find dialog's value box and click Find.
5. Leave the find dialog open but move it if in the way.
6. Click in the gallery window and select all the results (Ctrl+A/Cmd+A). Note if you use the keyboard shortcuts with Find dialog selected you'll do a Find All - not what you want.
7. Click Item / Edit Keywords or use Ctrl+Shift+K (Cmd+Shift+K) to open the Edit Keywords dialog. Find the bad value in the list, select it and click delete. The word 'delete' appears in the list after that entry.
8. In the box on the bottom of the dialog, type - or paste in - the corrected value and click the Add button. The value is added to the main list with 'Add' next to it.
9. Now click OK and the additions/deletions are applied to the selected records and the dialog closes. Alternatively, if you click cancel at the point the dialog closes without committing any of the changes made in the last 2 steps.
10. The Find dialog is still open, so you can type in the next 'bad' value and repeat the process until all your corrections are made. (If you have a lot of changes and big lists you could consider scripting as an alternative).

What are parsed keywords? This is where "tall people" is added as "tall", "people" and "tall people". The phrase "very tall people" would give you "very tall people", "very", "tall" and "people". Note that one error means two keywords must be corrected.

Imagine you had made an error and added the keyword "tall poeple", with the second word spelled incorrectly. You now need to correct both "poeple" and "tall poeple". That's fine, you think, I'll use a 'contains' search for "poeple" as that will find both errors and then replace all with "people". Unfortunately, this way all the "tall poeple" values become "people" instead of "tall people". So, what to do?

There are two routes here. If your records each have only a few keywords, you can set up your gallery view so as to see the keywords and select only the needed values; i.e. in the above scenario, you'd select and correct "tall poeple" and the do the same for "poeple". The second and safer, but longer method, is to stick with the main method above, but if you have any multi-value keywords you must do two searches, one for the full phrase and won't for the wrongly spelled word alone.

Question: Importing/Exporting MKL [FAQ00066.htm]
Last Update:- 01 June 2006

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