Thursday, August 19, 2010

Handyshopper to ToMarket

I am not the only one that is heartbroken that the maker of HandyShopper has expressed no interest in making an app for Droid. I have used it for years, and the only thing I didn’t like about it was not being able to edit it on my desktop.

So, I looked at several other shopping apps (Grocery King, OI Shopper, Dr. Shopper, Upvise, Our Groceries, Hungry, Andyshopper) and ToMarket (free for Lite, or $3.99 for Pro) is the most Handyshopper-like app I could find. And bonus - you can edit it via a csv file on your computer, but it’s still not easy to add things to the list.

However, I did successfully add all 1500+ of my Handyshopper items to ToMarket, and while it did take some time, it wasn’t all that hard.

How to import your Handyshopper lists from your Palm to ToMarket on your Droid:

  1. Export each of your Handyshopper store lists to your Memos, using either dashes or bullets (I unchecked everything, I didn’t care about prices or aisles, but I imagine you can tweak these steps to add whatever you like from HS).
  2. Sync your Palm with your computer.
  3. On your computer, open a Word Doc (or even Notepad) and cut & paste each file into the document.
  4. Do a “Find & Replace” to “replace” all the dashes or bullets with nothing (deleting the dashes/bullets).
  5. Do a “Find & Replace” to “replace” all the commas (“,”) with “@comma@” (not in quotes).
  6. If you have any multiple line items (like I used to paste entire recipes into my shopping lists), make them one line.

    If you have this:
    Flour
    Sugar
    Eggs

    Change to:
    Flour & Sugar & Eggs
    or
    Flour @comma@ Sugar @comma@ Eggs

    (Whatever, just keep it on one line!)
  7. On your Droid, download ToMarket (either the “Lite” or “Pro”).
  8. Open it, and add each of your stores (They are the titles of each of your Memos): Menu button ->More->Store Maintenance.
  9. For each of your Databases (I had “General” and “Christmas”) in HS, make that a List title in TM: Menu button->Switch Lists->Create a New List
  10. Helpful hint: Add a couple items manually on your Droid to each List (so when you open the CSV file, there’s data in there to kind of guide you).
  11. Export the Database: Menu button->More->Tools->Preferences->Export Database (Click OK)
  12. Hook up your Droid (as a USB drive) via USB to your computer. Go to the ToMarket\export folder and you’ll find the ToMarket.csv file. Copy this to your desktop, and make a backup copy somewhere else (just in case you mess up the first file.)
  13. Back on your computer, open the file… How the .csv file is laid out is explained by ToMarket here, along with some tips on how data should be entered (some we fixed in steps 5 & 6 above). Note that Column A is your “List” names, and Column B is your item names, and Column D is the store names (separated by semicolons).
  14. From the Word doc, paste one of your lists (except the first line (store name)) into Column B under the items you had manually entered on your Droid.
  15. Edit Column D with “All;Storename;” (If you have something that you want to appear on multiple store lists, like toothpaste, change it to “All;DrugstoreName;GroceryStoreName;” or whatever (Note: If you had an item on multiple store lists in HS, it will be showing up in each exported Memo – you can delete the multiples of the items, you just need one, as long as you change the store names to the ones you want it to show up in).
  16. You can also edit the other columns if you want (or just fill down each column so it matches what’s above it).
  17. Once your file is complete (or if you just want to do a test run), save and close the file, and move the file back onto the Droid via the USB (replacing the old one).
  18. IMPORTANT: Disconnect the Droid from the computer!
  19. Open ToMarket on the Droid.
  20. Import the file: Menu button->More->Tools->Preferences->Import Database. This may take a while, depending how many entries you have (I had 1500, so it took a few minutes).
  21. Everything should be in ToMarket! (Note: If you open your file and notice weird names (“Flour” “Butter” “Sugar” “Eggs” for example) for stores or lists, go back and do steps 5 & 6 – Remember: NO Commas, and No multiple line items!)


The whole process was relatively easy (especially compared to the time I had moving my calendar to Google Calendar), just took some time. I also found it pretty forgiving, like when I didn’t remove all the commas, and had items on multiple lines in the cell in the csv file.

13 comments:

  1. Wow. I have been struggling with all the same issues but have not made the leap to the Droid yet for all the reasons you point out. I too have been communicating with the Pimlical developer and am very attached to Datebk6. Do you think that once he releases Pimlical for the Droid (a fe months?!) it will be very easy to migrate all my Palm centro data directly to the Droid without having to spend what I'm sure must have been every waking moment for weeks setting up your Droid with workaround software???

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  2. Does ToMarket handle different aisle numbers for different stores? I am slowly working my way through your instructions above and I have just realized that different aisle numbers aren't mentioned...thanks for any info!

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  3. hoyameb, no it doesn't. It supports just an aisle per product. ToMarket is very similar to HandyShopper, but it is not identical yet.

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  4. I stumbled on your blog and am going to try this out. Thanks for posting!

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  5. I finally got all of my data ported over, thanks so much! FYI, I didn't have Palm Desktop installed on my Windows 7 laptop, so I used bluetooth to transfer the databases over to my new phone (HTC Evo) and then put them on my laptop from there. Just be sure to shorten the DB name and take out any special characters.

    ToMarket isn't quite as elegant as HandyShopper but I'm sure I will get used to it.

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  6. Thanks for putting this out there! Do you know if either light or full versions of ToMarket allow you to assign the same item (e.g bread) to different stores (Trader Joe's, Target, QFC) ? I downloaded the lite version, and it doesn't seem like it. I loved that about HandyShopper!

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  7. Elandra said...

    Thanks for putting this out there! Do you know if either light or full versions of ToMarket allow you to assign the same item (e.g bread) to different stores (Trader Joe's, Target, QFC) ? I downloaded the lite version, and it doesn't seem like it. I loved that about HandyShopper!
    October 10, 2010 11:56 AM

    You make one master list and for each item that you want listed at different stores you listed, you can select and save to each store. If "lite" doesn't allow this you will have to spring for $3.99. Seems it is worth it.

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  8. ToMarket does now support different aisles for each store and it does allow you to use different store for each item. I also used Handy Shopper for years and am very happy with ToMarket.

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  9. ToMarket now has a conversion utility for Handy Shopper in beta release. See http://www.tomarketweb.com/dnn/GettingStarted/ConvertingFromHandyShopper.aspx for details

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  10. I am finding that when I "backup", the backup is only the "default list". it is not backing up my other lists.
    Any suggestions?

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  11. I've spent 90 minutes trying variations of the csv file generated by the export executable.
    Now, some users here may not know about that export app, others have preferred the Memo pad export for their own reasons. My question is this: have any of you abandoned ToMarket's own PDB>csv export program and used the above method because it works better?

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  12. Steve, I am using the TM's export to move my HandyShopper databases to the Android. BUT, I have at least 4 different "shopping" lists. After they convert to "ToMarket.csv" do I just change the name so they don't keep overwriting my original shopping list?

    I used HandyShopper (at the suggestion of someone else) to help my husband keep track of the States Quarters, Movies we liked, National Parks Stickers, etc.

    Can I still do all that with ToMarket?

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  13. Does anybody have any information on the number of categories supported by ToMarket on android? I moved to android and ToMarket from Handy Shopper years ago but I started to make more use of categories (adding a number to the name to represent an aisle) but when I got to a certain number of categories ToMarket seemed to replace the last added category with the newly created one. I have exported to Excel and found some products have moved categories unbidden as well. I intend to try and sort in Excel and re-import, but do wonder if it will go pear-shaped if I exceed a certain number of categories?

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