GBHills - Loading your Own Ascent Information


This page is intended to help those who have records of their own ascents stored in some computer system and want to load them into GBHills.  Obviously this will depend on the way the records are stored, but these guidelines may be of assistance.

In essence what you have to do is to construct a file containing your information in a format which can be read by GBHills, and then load it using the "Load" option offered by the "Other" button.  The format for the file is described first and then some information on how you might construct such a file.

Don't forget that at present at least any data you load will completely replace any ascents you have stored already!

Data File Format

The file needs to be similar to the ascent files which you can save from GBHills and reload (see the main Help file for this).  For convenience the example given there is repeated here: 

GBHills Saved Data

DBVer:	2.0	User:	dbb	DLTime:	25-Jun-2003 14:19	FilVer:	1

Hill	Name	GR	Metres	Types	Date	Comment
957	Beinn Alligin - Sgurr Mhor	NG865612	986	AMR	18-May-2002	Fine
968	Beinn Alligin - Tom na Gruagaich	NG859601	922	AMR	18-May-2002	Fine
1050	Fionn Bheinn	NH147621	933	AMR	19-May-2002	Fine; wonderful view
695	Beinn Sgritheall	NG836126	974	AMR	02-Jun-2002	Good view
705	Beinn Sgritheall NW Top	NG834131	928	Tr	02-Jun-2002

Checksum:	81C1A4C4

You can use exactly this format if you wish, but it is designed mainly to be used as a backup mechanism within GBHills and for exporting to other systems; it contains information which is not needed if you just want to import your own data.  To do this you can use a similar but simpler file format containing less information.  This format omits the first two non-blank lines beginning with GBHills and DBVer and also the checksum line at the bottom.  It also omits the "Types" column, which  is present only for information in the saved file and ignored on loading.  The first line should start with the column title line beginning "Hill<tab>Name<tab>GR...".  Then, for each of your ascents you need to provide a line giving enough information for GBHills to work out which hill you climbed and when you did it.

As in the more complex file format, blank lines and lines beginning with a semicolon character are ignored.

For extra convenience, if the fourth column heading is "Feet" rather than "Metres", then you can provide heights in feet.

The fields in the file are:

If a field is omitted, the delimiting tab must still be present except at the end of a line (trailing tabs and spaces are ignored).

To ensure the correct data is uploaded, the program checks the Hill, Name, GR and Metres fields against the database.  They do not all need to be supplied; two matches are sufficient.  To match, name and hill number must be exact, GR must be correct within 0.3 km and height within 3 metres.  None of the matches are case-sensitive.  If any of these fields is present and does not match to these criteria, or if there is any ambiguity (for example there are hills with the same name and height), an error message is output and the file must be corrected and reloaded.  These rules may seem over-complicated, but they are regarded as necessary to avoid errors in your data.

So here is an example of a file which you could load to duplicate the ascents saved above.  I have included "<tab>" before each tab character for clarity, but the real file should only contain the tab character:
Hill<tab>	Name<tab>	GR<tab>	Metres<tab>	Date<tab>	Comment
<tab>	Beinn Alligin - Sgurr Mhor<tab>	<tab>	984<tab>	18-May-2002<tab>	Weather fine
<tab>	Beinn Alligin - Tom na Gruagaich<tab>	<tab>	924<tab>	18-may-2002<tab>	Fine

<tab>	Fionn Bheinn<tab>	<tab>	933<tab>	19-May-2002<tab>

;The next line refers to Beinn Sgritheall
695<tab>	<tab>	ng836126<tab>	974<tab>	02-jun-02<tab>
705<tab>	Ben Sgritheall NW Top<tab>	NG834133<tab>	925<tab>	02-Jun-02 11:15<tab>Mist and rain

As you can see, each data line needs to contain at least three bits of information (two from the first four fields and the ascent date) and at least four tab characters.

One difficulty you are likely to encounter is that you do not have even two bits of information about the hill.  You are quite likely to have the name, but perhaps not exactly the one used in the database.  You may well have the height - perhaps not in metres, but it is easy enough to convert.  You will probably not have the Hill Number or the Grid Reference.  I can't help too much here, but my suggestion is to prepare a file (see below) containing the names and heights you have and attempt to load it.  Many of the data lines will work because the names match, others will be rejected.  You will get a message for each line which is rejected up to a maximum of 10.  You can correct those by looking up the hill and substituting the correct name or perhaps by deleting the name and entering the hill number instead.  You could put the name in the comment column (or on a comment line) to remind you.  In this way, with some effort, you can get a file which will load.

How to Build an Input File in the Correct Format

The easiest way is to use a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel to get your data into columns in the correct format and order, and then to save it as a tab-delimited text file.

It may well be that your data is in a spreadsheet already.  If not, it might be in a table in Microsoft Access or a word processor such as Word.  From both of these it is relatively easy to save the data in a tab-delimited format which can then be opened in a spreadsheet such as Excel.  For example for a Word table do Table / Select table and then Table / Convert / Table to text, and select Tab as the delimiting character.

Once you have the data in a spreadsheet, the following steps are one way of arriving at a file in the correct format.  They are described for Microsoft Excel, but similar operations would be possible with most other spreadsheets: