JFTRans FAQ

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"When I start up JFTrans and load an MDB file or import a PDB file, I cannot see the data in the grid unless I highlight a specific cell ? "

This appeared to be a problem with some European users, and I believe it has been addressed in the latest update. If you see this happening, select the Grid Properties option from the Options menu, and then click on the Default button in the Font section. This will reset the fonts to 8 point Arial, and everything should be fine from then on. You could also change the font size if you want. The problem appeared to be that on install, the font size was getting set to 0 instead of 8 as it should have.

"I seem to be having some problems with JFTrans in that it won't import a JFile PDB file. I keep getting the following error message:

PDB file contains an improperly named popup field. The popup letter does not match a field number designated as a popup field type. Please check the PDB file and try again."

The problem rests with JFile in that what it does is match a popup to a specific field number / letter combination so that, for example, field 1 is popup 'a', field 3 is popup 'c' etc.. This is fine as it goes, but if you modify the field structure and delete a field for example, then the popup letters are sometimes not re-matched. When JFTrans tries to import the data, it checks the structure of the PDB file, which says, for example, that the 4th. field is a popup type field. It then works on the assumption that if it is the 4th. field, then the name of the popup is popup 'd'. If it cannot find a popup 'd' in the data, then it generates the error message above.

What has usually happened here is that you must of modified the PDB structures, and one or more of the fields that are set to popups don't have the appropriate letters assigned.

In the Reference Section of the help file for JFTrans, you will find the documentation for the JFile converter that explains this relationship of field number to letter. The simple way to fix this is to use the JFile converter to write the data to a CSV file AND an IFO file. The IFO file defines the structure of the data, and using the converter documentation, you should be able to clean up the problem easily. You will most likely find that one popup is offset by one letter only. JFTrans will tell you which popup is the problem in the error message.

I tried to find a way for JFTrans to manage this, but I have no way of really automating the fix, as I cannot possible know what should or should not be popup data.