Import from a text file

There are so many way how people make secret notes and hide them. A piece of paper, the page 318 in a book, the bottom side of a furniture, just to name a few. This situation has not changed when it comes to computers. There is no "standard" format to store secrets, but there are many "confidential" formats.

This, of course, makes it difficult to import secrets into our program sharedSecrets. What we can do is to import text files in a flexible way. The text file has to have one line (row) per secret, and the different parts of the secret, e.g. the secret's name, the user id, the password, are all in this row, and are separeted by some separator. Supported separator are a comma, a tab or a semicolon. Such a text file may look like:

User ID	password	topic	topic group	comments	homepage/address
401713-4487-3872-1601	4589	Gold Card	bank	confirmation no: 225
30827659	9876	ATM card	bank
30827659	24680	phone banking	bank		535-44823
Mr. Smith	36768989	Swiss Numbered Account	money	"clerk: Mr. Rütlihuber keyphrase: security rules"	Zürich, Uriplatz 1
Mr. Jones	all you need is love	stock depot Bahamas	money	Bahamas securities bank	Nassau, 5 main street
Ellias.Bill@google.com	ec,toemc	Google Mail	Internet
biker33	cm4pm.e	Amazon	Internet
	4894	Ferrari immobilizer	cars
	6767	BMW coupe car radio	cars	press left button for 5 sec, then enter code
	3right, 4left, 17right	safe behind Picasso	money
	789.334.567	safe in office	money	enter new code: enter old code, press hash key for more than 3 sec, then follow menu

As you can see from this example, there are empty fields possible, and the first line of the text file is not a secret itself, but contains the original column headers. To import this file, follow these steps:

choose "Import… from the file menu.
select the text file you want to import in the "Open" dialog.
sharedSecrets will open the text file and display it in a table format. Please check, whether sharedSecrets has interpreted the lines of text and the separator symbols correctly
If the table looks weired, you may try to select the type fo field separator manually.
Sort the columns by dragging the column headers to the right column. The column headers must fit to the content of the columns. If yo do not want to import a column, drag a "--" column header to this column.
Decide, whether you want to import the first line or not and mark the check box "First line contains titel only, do not import" accordingly.
If you like, you can manually edit the fields before import.
Press the button "Import".

Import rules

The import is undoable. If yo do not like the result of the import, simply undo it. Then, you can modify the text file and try it again.

Secrets with an empty secret name in the column "secret" are not imported.

If a secret with the same name exists already in the data base of sharedSecrets, this secret is not imported.

Secrets with no category name in the column "category" are moved to the group "imported secrets"

Security

Having all secrets in an unencrypted text file is a security risk. Delete the text file as soon as possible. Are there any versions of the text file somewhere in a backup? Delete the backup versions also.