Transferring Flashcards From Palm / WM

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Here are some very brief instructions for transferring your flashcard database from Palm OS or Windows Mobile to iPhone. (these are for Pleco 2.0; for 1.0, follow steps 1-4 at http://www.pleco.com/manual/upgradeguide.html#flashtransfer, copy that file to your iPhone as described below in step 2, then import it via "Import Cards")

1) Back up the database to your computer. See http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#backrest for instructions for how to do this on Windows Mobile. On Palm, follow the instructions at http://www.pleco.com/manual/palminst.html#backrest to back them up to an SD card, then use a memory card reader to copy the file to your PC. (if you don't have a memory card reader, can only back up via HotSync, or can't back up at all, contact support@pleco.com)

2) Copy the database from there to your iPhone. The best way to do this is to go into the Flashcards tab, File Manager screen on your iPhone, tap on "Upload / Download Files," enter the "Local" address on that screen in a web browser on your computer, click "Browse," select the flashcard database on your computer's hard drive, then click "Upload." Alternatively, you can download it via Pleco's built-in web browser if you send it to yourself at a webmail account or upload it to a file-sharing service like Dropbox.

3) Finally, on your iPhone, go to the top level of the Flashcards tab again, scroll down to / tap on "Restore Database," and tap on the flashcard database file you just moved over. If you don't see that file, its file extension may have been screwed up in some way - make sure it's .pqb or .pqb-backup, if not, try renaming it to one of those, or if that doesn't work, contact support@pleco.com.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
One small note to add to this (since it seems like it'll be a few more days until the full guide is ready):

If you have a lot of flashcards that link to the Oxford dictionary, you're not going to be able to use those flashcards on iPhone since the Oxford dictionary isn't currently available in our iPhone software. To remap them to another dictionary:

1) Go into the Flashcards tab, and tap on "Search Cards."
2) Tap on the "search for" item and select "incomplete" from the (long) list of options.
3) Tap on "Search Now."
4) Tap on the "Edit" button at the top right corner of the screen, then on the "Batch" button at the bottom.
5) Scroll down to the "Dictionary" section, and select a dictionary (ABC is best if you have it, since it covers every word in Oxford, though Pleco Basic and/or CC-CEDICT would work too), then tap on "Remap Now" to begin remapping cards to the new dictionary.

After that's done, you may want to go back and do another search for "incomplete" cards and remap to a different dictionary to catch any that didn't find a match in the first one you remapped to.
 
Not many replies to this tutorial, so maybe its working for most. It worked beautifully for my wife's flashcards. I backuped up my flashcard database using PlecoMover, like I have for a couple years on my Palm TX. The iPhone told me that the "Restore Succeeded", but none of my flashcards appeared. After further examination, I realized the database titled "PlecoFlash.pqb-backup" is only 86 kb. I have several thousand flashcards, and an .xml export gives me a 6 MB file. I can still use my flashcards on my palm so nothing has been lost yet. They all appear to be there (hope you'll forgive this breech of the platform transfer agreement until I get my iPhone working :wink: ) I have tried using fileZ to hunt down where the database actually hides on my palm/SD card, but haven't had any luck.

By the way,
I was successful in moving one of my User Dictionaries from the Palm to the iPhone once I deleted the "backup" extension, so uploading the files to iPhone doesn't seem to be the problem.

My signature below is terribly out of date. sorry
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Fleminator said:
Not many replies to this tutorial, so maybe its working for most. It worked beautifully for my wife's flashcards. I backuped up my flashcard database using PlecoMover, like I have for a couple years on my Palm TX. The iPhone told me that the "Restore Succeeded", but none of my flashcards appeared. After further examination, I realized the database titled "PlecoFlash.pqb-backup" is only 86 kb. I have several thousand flashcards, and an .xml export gives me a 6 MB file. I can still use my flashcards on my palm so nothing has been lost yet. They all appear to be there (hope you'll forgive this breech of the platform transfer agreement until I get my iPhone working ) I have tried using fileZ to hunt down where the database actually hides on my palm/SD card, but haven't had any luck.

The database actually lives in a hidden drive in your TX's flash memory; it turned out out that that was a safer place to put it than regular internal memory and a higher-performance place to put it than an SD card. It's been a while since I did much with FileZ but I believe there's a preferences option in it to enable viewing hidden volumes, so turn that on and you should then be able to find / manually copy your database.

I'm not sure why PlecoMover wouldn't be seeing it, though - perhaps there's a second database lying around somewhere that it's picking up / backing up instead of the one that the main app is using?
 
I looked in the TX's flash memory. FileZ's option to view hidden volumes is already on. I still only see the 86 kb PlecoFlash file. I've looked for other files that have the "pqb" extension or the "PQBK" extension, but can't make heads nor tails of them. I think you are right that PlecoMover hasn't been recognizing the actual database, but I'd love some help finding the actual database since we know it exists...any more ideas?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Fleminator said:
I looked in the TX's flash memory. FileZ's option to view hidden volumes is already on. I still only see the 86 kb PlecoFlash file. I've looked for other files that have the "pqb" extension or the "PQBK" extension, but can't make heads nor tails of them. I think you are right that PlecoMover hasn't been recognizing the actual database, but I'd love some help finding the actual database since we know it exists...any more ideas?

Perhaps it's stored as a regular PDB database - are there any "Pleco Flashcards" or "PlecoFlash" files in the regular internal memory? It could also be on your SD card - any large .pqb files on there?
 
I transfered all the PQBK files I could find to my iPhone, They are titled PlecoCUser########.pqb-backup. When I try to "Restore Database" it says "Not A Flashcard Backup - This file appears to be a user dictionary database backup, not a flashcard one; you can install it in Pleco via Settings/Manage Dicts." I guess they are backups of my user dictionaries that were .pdb files.

Any other ideas, or ways that I could manually export my database from Palm and bring it into iPhone?

Thanks
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Fleminator said:
Any other ideas, or ways that I could manually export my database from Palm and bring it into iPhone?

Well you could use the "Export Cards" command to dump the cards to an XML file - you'd lose your profile settings but keep the cards / scores / categories at least. But that database has to be on there somewhere - so there are no other PlecoFlash / Pleco Flashcards files in either volume of internal memory or anywhere on your SD card?
 
Transferring Flashcards From Palm / WM

Postby mikelove » Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:46 pm
Pending a full-on guide to this in a day or two, here are some very brief instructions for transferring your flashcard database from Palm OS or Windows Mobile to iPhone. (these are for Pleco 2.0; for 1.0, follow steps 1-4 at http://www.pleco.com/manual/upgradeguid ... shtransfer, copy that file to your iPhone as described below in step 2, then import it via "Import Cards")

Did this guide get released? Where is it?

Thanks,
Lancer
http://LancerKind.com <-- Science Fictionist
 
The steps outlined at the head of this thread worked fine with one adjustment:
Adding the user dictionary entries to the dictionary required me to remove the "backup" from the end of the filename. The flashcard import supported both extensions without any problem.

Good work!

Cheers!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
lancerkind said:
The steps outlined at the head of this thread worked fine with one adjustment:
Adding the user dictionary entries to the dictionary required me to remove the "backup" from the end of the filename. The flashcard import supported both extensions without any problem.

Ah, good catch - we'll fix this in the next update. Thanks.
 

watereyes

Member
Mike,

Is this updated in the latest release? Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. In my latest email marketing campaign I am focusing on timelines of my favorite pieces of software and the bugs etc. Think of it as sort of a tracking system. i would like nothing more than to give Pleco some good reviews based on what I find.
 

lcdrdata

秀才
One small note to add to this (since it seems like it'll be a few more days until the full guide is ready):

If you have a lot of flashcards that link to the Oxford dictionary, you're not going to be able to use those flashcards on iPhone since the Oxford dictionary isn't currently available in our iPhone software. To remap them to another dictionary:

1) Go into the Flashcards tab, and tap on "Search Cards."
2) Tap on the "search for" item and select "incomplete" from the (long) list of options.
3) Tap on "Search Now."
4) Tap on the "Edit" button at the top right corner of the screen, then on the "Batch" button at the bottom.
5) Scroll down to the "Dictionary" section, and select a dictionary (ABC is best if you have it, since it covers every word in Oxford, though Pleco Basic and/or CC-CEDICT would work too), then tap on "Remap Now" to begin remapping cards to the new dictionary.

After that's done, you may want to go back and do another search for "incomplete" cards and remap to a different dictionary to catch any that didn't find a match in the first one you remapped to.


So I'm finally about to move everything from my venerable Palm Tungsten E to a new iPad Air. In the original post you stated the Oxford dictionary wasn't available, but that post is now five years old. Am I correct in assuming the Oxford dictionary is now available and these instructions are OBE, or am I still going to need them (since many of my flashcards ARE linked to Oxford)? THANKS!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It is available now, but you'll still need to do a remap since the old entry IDs aren't automatically linked up to the new ones - they should match up nicely in almost all cases but they'll show 'missing entry' until you do that remap.
 
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