Importing Text Files

[sliwa]

I have text files from about 1000 emails from an L-SOFT listserv. There were only about 40 users and its not that much. It has good historical content so I'd like to try an import it into a virtually empty vBulletin forum. I know that Impex normally only works for importing users.

I would have no trouble cutting and pasting into a template, for example .csv form.

For us the data being searchable and available is more importantly than correctly linking to active users and etc.

Given this, here is what I hope:


I would manually put in a set of users (takes a few minutes for that few)



I manually put the text files into a .csv file or the equivalent. I assume it would be something like columns of:Forum ID, Thread ID, User ID, Date, Post (or whatever, just guessing)



Then I would import the file, rebuild the threads, make the old users inactive, invite the previous members to join up.

Is there anyway my hope can be satisfied. If not with instructions, are there consultants that could help us?

Alternatively, is there a way to manually cut and paste the data into vBulletin as an Admin?

Curious if I have any paths to keep this data in the system?

[Jerry]

Getting the users in would be easy enough as the CSV importer can do that on just emails, though it does make the email the username if that's all you have.

What format is the rest of the content in ?

[sliwa]

I just have a bunch of text files that are the emails for the listserv from 2002 to 2008. Something like 500 to 1000 emails and/or threads. I could get it cut and pasted into any format (tab, csv, formatted text, etc.) with an admin asst, so automatic parsing isn't needed.

[Jerry]

I would suggest "username, email" for the users as for the main data it would take a fair bit of work as it means lining up all the IDs from each bit of data to a post or thread.

There is no importer that can do that by default.