Assigning a pushpin symbol when importing to Streets & Trips

I've been looking through the help and online about importing data into S&T. I've done this plenty of times but I've always been confused on the "Symbol" column that is designated in the gray column headers with the import dialog. Are you able to specify which pushpin symbol that one uses? All the other columns are in the pulldown designator but not the symbol which makes me believe you can't.

Does anyone know if there is a way to specify the pushpin to use when importing data points?

Sorry if this is just the dumbest question ever.

Curt

Hi Crazyst -

I don't see a 'symbol' column in the import wizard dialog,





but do see one in the properties dialog box




Is this the column your talking about? Or is there another one I'm not seeing?

I import the points, then right click on the pushpin set in the legend and overview pane - and change the set pushpin Icon to what I want.

Does that help?

I figured out my confusion but not a solution to the problem. The "Symbol" I was seeing was a column header in my file that I was importing. I also included a screen shot with the pull down for what that column can represent and there doesn't appear to be way to designate a column that has the pushpin or symbol name in it.

I import about 100 pushpins in at a time and need them all in the same set for other purposes so importing each set separately probably won't work for me. Maybe this would be a nice feature to have for the import unless there's a way to do it that I'm missing.

Thanks for the help so far.

Curt

Attached Images

import-dialog.GIF (34.5 KB)

If you want them to all have the same pushpin, you'll have to import the points as a set.

I have a similar need. I start with a sales suspect list that can include thousands of names. I break the list out into ranges that are meaningful to me - then I copy each range to a separate worksheet (copying header info as well) and give it the name of the range. Then, I import each worksheet and change the pushpin icon to what I want by right clicking on it in the legend and overview pane, choosing properties, and clicking on the 'symbol' option.

That sounds like a good solution for you but for me it won't work.

It doesn't seem to hard to be able to allow a user to assign that on import but I never assume anything is easy when it comes to programming as I use to do it for a living.

Curt

As it has been two and a half years since the previous post, and Streets & Trips still does not allow users to specify pushpin symbols during importing, I thought I would state that I wish S&T would add it.

Like crazyst, I also have been a programmer, but I do not believe it would be very difficult to add this feature. S&T (obviously) already can keep track of which symbol within S&T is associated with various pushpin sets and individual pushpins; S&T has a method of uniquely identifying each pushpin symbol.

So, a new feature needs to be added to allow the user to use those already existing unique identifiers. I could suggest more (like how to provide them) but I think anyone close to this situation probably can imagine.

Anyway, I think a lot of people would appreciate such a new feature.

I actually did do some digging into this and the way that S&T has decided to store symbols in the internal database causes some real headaches. Now that I've had a look into it some I think it would need a rewrite although anything can be done in code.

Curt

What an excellent challenge! Without spending much time, could you please share with us just the main cause of the headache? In other words, what is the main part that causes a rewrite rather than addition/change?