Importing

An import turns documents into published items: one document, a whole folder of them with its tree, ZIP archives, or documents on the web. Each document is converted and published by a background job of its own, so nothing waits on the page and you can leave it.

Who can do this

Users whose role has ezodf/import, and who may create items in the folder the documents go into.

Import documents

1. Click Setup, then Documents (Word, OpenDocument, PDF ...) under Import and export in the left column, and Import documents. Or open the menu of a folder in the tree and choose Documents > Import documents here.
2. Where: press Choose a folder and pick the folder the documents go into.
3. What: drop files or folders onto the area, or press Files or ZIP archives... or A folder.... You can also enter web addresses of documents, one per line. One import takes up to 500 files and 500 MB; the page names the limits of your site.
4. How: choose the options and the language of the new items, and give the import a name if you like.
5. Press Import. The files are uploaded one by one with a progress bar; then the page of the import opens.

The options

• Folders become folders: the tree of a chosen folder or of a ZIP archive is rebuilt below the target. An existing folder of the same name is used again.
• Update what was imported before from the same file and place: importing the same file into the same place again makes a new version of the item instead of a second item.
• Import images and other files as image and file items.
• Suggest a summary, keywords and image texts with AI, where the site has the writing assistant: the suggestions are shown on the page of the import and you confirm them there.

Follow an import

The page of an import shows every document with its state (queued, running, done, failed, skipped), a link to the new item, its class and the converter that read it, live while the import runs. Retry the failed documents queues them again, for example after LibreOffice was installed; Retry does it for one; Cancel stops the documents that have not started. Document imports lists your imports.

Replace an item with a document

Open the item's menu in the tree and choose Documents > Replace with a document. The document becomes a new version of the item; the old content stays in its version history.

What is taken over

• Into rich text fields: headings of several levels, paragraphs, bold and italic text, links, numbered and bulleted lists, tables and images.
• Into other fields, when the document names them: text lines, text blocks, dates, dates with times, images and matrices.
• Not taken over: fonts, colors and page layout. Fill in keywords, checkboxes and relations by hand.

What can go wrong

• An import publishes at once. It does not stop at a draft, unless an approval workflow holds it, and a replacement does not check whether someone has an open draft of the item. Check the documents first, and tell colleagues who edit the item.
• A web address is refused. Only http and https addresses on the public internet are downloaded; addresses of the local network and the server itself are refused.
• A Word or PDF document failed. Without LibreOffice, ezodf reads OpenDocument, DOCX, spreadsheets, presentations, Markdown, HTML, text and the text of PDF files itself; other formats need the converter. Ask an administrator, then use Retry the failed documents.
• Images have no alternative text. Add it after the import.

Read more

• Creating a Word document to import
• How do I import or export a word processor document?, in the help center.