How to PRESERVE your RUNNING LOG?

[Benn Griffin]

I am wondering how people preserve their running logs. I have been logging on FRB since Fall of 2007 and have amassed quite the log (especially since I am prone to long winded descriptions of minute details). Was wondering what people do. I have started to print and paste the logs into books, but this is inherently time consuming. Has anyone just simply paid to print them at a Kinkos or something? Maybe double sided so it reads like a book? I thought about doing this so that way I can keep them to look back on. Just curious.

[Paul Petersen]

You can export the whole log to .csv format. Which means that you can keep a backup of it on your local computer, or on a flash drive or something like that. If you are not familiar with .csv, you can view it in Microsoft Excel, or probably any number of other programs.

I have never printed a log (that's sooo 1990s...), but do back up to csv occasionally.

[Sasha Pachev]

Benn:

Just think about how many trees we could save if we used our printers more sparingly!

[Benn Griffin]

Yeah, but I like looking at the printed pages .. like reading a book.. my book .

I printed out my log since 2007 like 450 pages but did so on 100% recycled paper and double sided. Printed out Emma's too and gave it to her as a present for Valentine's Day

Emma and I recycle like it is our job and do our part, so I think it warrants a splurge for a worthy cause such as a running log.

[Joe Furse]

So, I tried to export my log to an OpenOffice spreadsheet (my computer is running on Ubuntu 9.10 (linux), so I don't have/need MS Office).  All the info just shows up in one column/cell separated by commas instead of being in separate cells.  I must be doing something wrong (likely, since I'm not a total computer geek), but I'm not sure what.  Or maybe it just doesn't work with OpenOffice, but that is probably less likely.  Suggestions?

[Paul Petersen]

It's comma-delimited. If you had a real office suite on a real operating system, you could open it quite easily. Joking.

Just do a search in your help for "comma-delimited". I guarantee there's a way to open it with column formatting.

[Steve P]

I use OpenOffice Calc all the time to read delimited files. The easiest way is to make sure the file extension is .txt rather than .csv. Then Calc will usually figure out on its own which delimiter (comma) the file is using. Then you can look at the data as a spreadsheet.

[Joe Furse]

So, there was this section where it asked me about delimiters...totally didn't see that.  There was a checkbox that said "commas"...clicked it...problem solved.  Duh.  So, if anyone is an idiot like me and needs to know how to do it in OpenOffice...that's how.