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There must be a Search function that I'm just not up to finding.

Can I import my Listings from LT to EYB?  If so will I then have a full listing at least when you add the books.

Hi eyepaint - we have a very comprehensive Help section - link at top right.  The details you need are in Help/How to/Books/Importing book data from your LibraryThing catalog.  Please make sure when you import the data that you only import your food and drink books.  We have had members import their entire book catalog and it is very tedious having to go through deleting all the non-food books.

Firstly Jane, Thanks.

Secondly, 5-10 minutes responses are incredable but at 6:00 PST on a Sunday night, WOW.

I was once told that when you were in business for yourself you only had to work a half day and that you get to pick which half.  Seems like...

Well, I didn't do so well there. the numbers all came over to the import screen and when I attempt to add them, it says,"You have entered an invalid Character."

The numbers have [ ] around them and of course a few have an "X" as there last character, I have no idea what this can't read.  Actually if it is the bracket I have little interest in removing 400+ brackets either.

You should remove the brackets as they are not part of the ISBN numbers - LibraryThing introduces them to save the leading zero, which gets dropped in an Excel format.  So what you have to do is remove the brackets while retaining the zeros.  This isn't a problem if your ISBN numbers are the 13 digit ones as they all start with 978 but if your numbers are the 10 digit ISBN with leading zeros then this is what you need to do.

The easiest way to get rid of the brackets and keep the leading zeros is to copy the column into Notepad, which is a text file, then remove the brackets by clicking Edit and replace.  CTRL H does the same procedure. Once the brackets are removed you can copy the column into our Import Books list.  The X at the end of some numbers is important as the last digit is a balancing number and is required for the ISBN to be recognized.

You gave us a good laugh with the half-day idea when you have your own business.  It's more like a day and a half fitted into a day.  And by the way, I'm on Eastern time so it's now 11:55pm on Sunday night!

Yes, I laughed at the half-day idea too -- I wish :)

Even after following all this good advice, same 'invalid character' notice.  So after nearly an hour of blairy eyed looking for said inalid character, I deleted the listing.

Then I moved my list over 25 ISBN numbers at a time.  It worked without a hitch.  Best I can figure is the program couldn't swallow that big an entry at once.

Now on to entering the rest of my books.

Thanks for all the help.

Glad to hear it is working for you but I'm sorry to hear you had such a struggle to get there.  Sometimes it can just be one ISBN number with an invalid digit which you wouldn't know by looking at the list.  But console yourself that even moving them over 25 at a time is much faster than adding the books one by one.