If you are not an experienced user of Microsoft Excel, you may have problems following these instructions.
You can compare PMM Sheets and PMM Notes to tables and records in a database. The plan is to import your documents, notes or other content you may have, into a special Microsoft Excel workbook called "Notes and Sheets for PMM.xls" (click here for the Excel file). Then you can export them from Excel onto disk. Finally you will import these files, which now have the correct format, into PMM.
An easy way to import content into Excel worksheets is to copy [Ctrl]+[c] and paste [Ctrl]+[v] content into the worksheet with tab "Notes for PMM". These will become your 'yellow notes'. Tables (or 'Sheets' in PMM) go into the worksheet with tab "Sheets for PMM". The records in the Excel worksheets are filled with dummy data that you can replace. You can add (or delete) as many records as you want, but to remember the limits of the version of PMM you have.
Another way to import your data into the Excel worksheets is by using Excel's import routines. For that, you will need to have special characters that Excel can read as markers separating fields and records. In Excel, click [Data][Import External Data].
Exporting the files from Excel and importing them into PMM, needs a few steps in between. A PMM project always needs 7 files and you must overwrite two of them before they can be imported. Of course you can only overwrite files which already exist, therefore you first need to create the files PMM uses. You can perform these actions by starting a macro, [Ctrl]+[e].
You might consider changing particular characteristics of the yellow notes you are about to create. In the Excel spreadsheet, at tab "(Notes Records)", two fields are automatically filled with the content you provided at other tab "Text for PMM Notes". The other fields have default characteristics, such as heigt, width and colour of the notes. If you wish, you can change the values in those record-fields. To make sure everything works okay, first try just a few records.
Follow these steps for importing content:
Start PMM.
Click [File][New]. When PMM asks if you are sure you want to start a new project, click [Yes].
Click [File][Save as...] and save the project as "Notes and Sheets for PMM".
Close PMM.
Open Excel.
Click [File][Open] and navigate to the Excel file you downloaded "Notes and Sheets for PMM.xls".
Click tab "Text for PMM Notes". Fill in columns "Name of PMM Note" and "Content of PMM Note" with the names and contents of one document per record. It is okay if you want to wrap the text, however do not use linebreaks (or carriage-returns) in the spreadsheet. Where you want them to show up in PMM, you can insert a machine-character produced by clicking [AltGr]+[t], þ (called "thorn"). When you add or delete records, make sure that you also add or delete records under tab "Notes and Sheets for PMM_Not" and tab "(Notes Records)".
Click tab "Text for PMM Sheets". Fill in column "Name of PMM Sheet" with the names of documents, one per record. It is okay if you want to wrap the text. When you add or delete records, make sure that you also add or delete records under tab "Notes and Sheets for PMM_Sht" and tab "(Sheets Records)".
Click [Ctrl]+[e]. This will start a macro that exports your text and saves it as PMM files. When Excel asks if it should overwrite existing files, click [Yes].
The Excel file changed its name during the process (of the macro) from "Notes and Sheets for PMM.xls" to "Notes and Sheets for PMM_sht.dat". To erase copies in cache memory, save the file as "Notes and Sheets for PMM.xls" by clicking [File][Save as...][Save as type][Microsoft Excel Worksheet (*.xls)] and and then in [File name] delete "_sht.dat".
Click [File][Exit].
Open PMM. Your documents should now automatically be imported into PMM. If they are not correctly imported, please mail to info@pmm.nl.
