Pb importing data in a custom collection

[Marcelin Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz]

Hi Robby,

On 12/7/25 15:07, Robby Stephenson wrote:
> Hi José-Marcio,
> 
> Sorry it took me a little while to respond. I've been traveling.

No problem. Really, no problem. Thanks a lot for this very good software 
and for the very good support.

> 
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2025 at 5:20 PM Marcelin Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz
> <jose.marcio.mc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've created a custom collection, a collection of photographs (many
>> thousands). I'm filling it thanks to .CSV data files.
>>
>> But, each time I add new photographs, I need two steps : the first one
>> to create new entries with some fields and the second one to add other
>> fields (EXIF data). Unfortunately, I can't do it in a single step.
> 
> I'll try to think through your process, see if I can improve something
> to make that easier. The CSV import is is one of the more "bare bones"
> imports, since there's little to no metadata coming along with the
> values.

You answer bellow solves my problem.

> 
>> So the first step must be adding entries (option : append to current
>> collection) and the second one to update these new entries (option :
>> merge to current collection). The first step works fine, but the second
>> one does nothing.
>>
>> Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Is there a key field which must be
>> present in both files ?
> 
> Each individual entry being imported is evaluated for merging by
> comparing field values against other entries, together with some
> weighting factors. For a custom collection, if there's a "title"
> field, that's given double weight, any URL field is double, and every
> other value has single weight. Then the total is compared against a
> threshold for matching. As it is right now, an identical title plus
> any kind of match on another field is enough to signal a possible
> match. For a strong match, it needs 3-4 more field matches, depending
> on the quality of the match.

The "Title" field is the key !!!

What I'm trying to do is to create the tellico data from an .CSV file 
with photographs EXIF data. The second step is used only to set (not 
replace) thumbnails field, which was empty. So, if the second file has 
just the Title field and the thumbnail, it shall work fine. I'll try it.

It will probably be much more efficient than loading a single .CSV with 
everything as, finally, I was ending doing.

IMHO, I understand the logic behind what you explained. But using just 
the Title field, could solve many situations. Or, possibly, you could 
add, in the "Import CSV dialog" the possibility to the user to chose 
which field he wants to use as a key to identify entries instead of the 
original one.

Import CSV is, maybe a "bare bone" but may be very useful and sometimes, 
the best solution.

> 
> If you want to email me directly with a sample collection file and
> .csv, I can take a look for you.

Thanks a lot. But I think your answer gives me what I need to solve my 
problem. I'll do it if it doesn't work.

Finally, Tellico is a very well conceived software.

Thanks a lot again and have a nice sunday

José-Marcio

> 
> Robby