KPG-D1N / NX-5x000 Copy-and-Paste Workaround (Long)

[N4OGL]

First, I want to thank the folks here (and you know who you are) that have PM'd me with helpful advice on programming the new NX-5x000 radio decks that I just acquired. The files you shared were most instructive and I've got rudimentary files build for both the VHF and UHF decks I own, that I will refine (in terms of options and personal features) over the weekend.

In the process of learning programming, I also figured out a workaround for copy-and-paste for this software, at least until Kenwood builds it in. This let me quickly copy almost everthing from my Kenwood TM-D710GA, instead of entering frequencies and tones one line at a time (which would have taken, conservatively, 15 years).

I also figured out that you can move Zones around in the order. Select the Zone, and using the 'Copy' command at the top left, Copy the zone to the end of the order, delete the original Zone and then rename the new copy. Arcane to be sure, but you can shuffle things around until you get the order you want. Now I just have to remember that the 'Add' commant lets me insert Zones into the hierarchy where I want them, and I can keep all this straight (and all my DMR zones in order).

What I did to Copy-and-Paste (distinctive to my own situation, but you'll get the idea) as a workaround:

1. Export all the frequencies from my TM-D710GA to a .CSV file, using RT System programming software (I also have Kenwood's software but didn't try it - it says it does the same thing).
2. Save it to the desktop and open in Excel (Office 2016, in my case) as a .CSV file. DO NOT save as .XLSX or anything.
3. Create a copy of the sheet in the same file (down at the bottom, where the tabs and the '+' sign are), and sort out the VHF frequencies I want to move. This takes it from a combination VHF/UHF file of 600 rows to a VHF file of 250 rows (in my case, anyway, but I do live in Los Angeles and there are repeaters everywhere and a whole lot of hills).
4. Open a new third blank sheet (tabs at the bottom, and the '+' sign).
5. Go to KPG-D1N and to the Zone/Channel table for the Zone in which you want the frequencies .
6. Copy the Channel table. Paste the table into this new third sheet.
7. This gives you a table in the new third sheet where the first row is the exported names for the columns, and rows 2 through the end are blank.
8. Go to the second sheet (sorted list of VHF frequencies). Copy the column with the receive frequencies you want in this particular Zone.
9. Go to the third sheet, select the first open cell in row 2 under the column for receive frequencies. Right-click and select "Paste values" and you'll see all the values paste themselves into the third sheet table as raw numbers.
10. Back to the second sheet. Select the transmit frequencies the same way. Paste into the third sheet as 'Values' beginning with the first cell in row 2 under column B (transmit frequencies).
11. In column C, D and E, because this was an analog Zone, I manually typed Analog, Analog, High in each cell in Row 2 under column C, D and E. Then I duplicated it down to the last row if frequencies (row 34, for example). I imagine that, if this was a DMR Zone, you would type DMR, DMR, High in each cell in column C, D and E and the Paste function would create a DMR channel. I haven't tried that. Yet. (FWIW, all my Analog Zones are set up as "DMR Conventional" Zones so I can mix and match frequencies and modes if I want.)
12. Leave all the other columns blank until you get to the 'Name' column (G? Not looking at the KPG-D1N right now). Copy the names of the channels from the second sheet to the third sheet as before, pasting as 'Values' only. Or leave it blank if you want to write new names after copying.
Now the channel table should be what you want to see in the NX-5x00 Zone.
13. In the Excel third sheet, copy from row 1 (with the field names) down to the end of the table with rows that have entries (row 34, in my case). Copy the entire row, not just the cells or columns with data. I selected the entire set of rows and hit "Cntrl-C" (Copy) on my Windows machine.
14. Go to the KPG-D1N, to the Zone on which you want the frequencies, and to the channel table in that zone. Select the first row. The first cell in the first row will get highlighted, but nothing else.
15. Hit 'Cntrl-V' (Paste). Wait. The table from Excel will get copied into the KPG-D1N, but not the first row with the names of the fields. In Copy-and-Paste that seems to just orient the KPG-D1N to what goes where. Row 1 from the Excel table just seems to disappear in the KPG-D1N.
16. You'll have to edit the PL independently. I tried copying it but got goofy entries. You can put "None" and it seems to copy correctly, but putting a tone like 100.0 Hz shows up as 10.0.
17. SAVE the file in the KPG-D1N. If you are continuing to copy/move fequencies, do not save the Excel file, because that adds formatting to the cells. In my case, after I copied the frequencies over into the Zone I wanted to fill up, I cleared the table (rows 2 through 34) and then did another Zone. Got about 400 channels programmed in an hour.
18. Of course, this isn't yet loaded in the radio decks, but it sure looks correct. We'll see what happens after I try to do that over the weekend.

I want to try this to copy Individual IDs from Excel - that's for tonight (and if I can distill by list of 500 IDs down to 100 so they fit). Using this approach, it should work.

Of course, if anyone knows how to expand the Individual ID list to take that many entries, I sure want to know about it!

Hopefully this will work for others. LMK if you need the version of the KPG-D1N I am on (just got it Monday), in case that matters.

73s.

 

[Jay911]

I think you mention this in the above, but I'll reiterate it if it's not clear to people - copy and paste to and from KPG-D1N is possible, but requires some mild preparation. I do it with a blank Excel spreadsheet consistently.

This is only possible in terms of things that are arranged in grid format in D1N (i.e. zone/channel assignments, individual ID lists, talkgroup ID lists, etc). You can't copy/paste for example a list of zones.

It's actually kind of simple - highlight an entire row by clicking the extreme left side of the row (the whole row will turn blue, or whatever your highlight color is, if you have done it right). Then select all by doing Ctrl+A, and this will select the entirety of that grid (including any items "outside" the visible area, i.e. all 1000 rows if you have a 1000 row grid). Hit Copy (Ctrl+C).

Paste (Ctrl+V) it into Excel and you will get a full grid in Excel, including headers for every column, and 'dummy data' for any rows in your grid which aren't filled in. For example I forget which particular grid this is in, possibly indy ID lists, but any "blank" rows will have individual ID filled in as 4294967294 (IIRC).

Now that you have the format of the grid as it came from D1N, edit the data within it in Excel to your heart's content. Just make sure you maintain the data structure and follow any formatting quirks that came across when being pasted from D1N. For example, IIRC CTCSS tone frequencies are listed without a decimal, so 123.0 is listed as 1230, and 151.4 is 1514, etc.

Once you are done editing the data in Excel, you can copy it back into D1N fairly easily. Couple things to remember:

1. Although I haven't tried pasting them in to D1N, I would try to avoid any "smart quotes", em dashes (long dashes), or any of that other junk that Microsoft "helpfully" adds when you type things in to an Office product (another no-no would be superscripts like th, i.e. 4th). Manually convert them to normal ASCII versions before pasting.

2. When you pasted into Excel, the columns probably auto-wrapped especially in terms of the titles/headers. D1N won't care if they're wrapped or not, so long as you don't change the content of the headers.

3. You do not have to paste the entire grid that was pasted out of D1N into Excel. For example, if you have a 1000 row grid and you only have 725 rows in it, you can drop off the last 275 that have dummy data in them. The one caveat here is, if you are pasting less data in than you pasted out from D1N into Excel, be aware you may have to go to the end of your list once it's in D1N and do some manual deleting. For example if you pasted out 500 rows and you're only putting 350 back into D1N, you may have 150 rows at the end of your list, when you're done pasting, that you don't want.

4. I have found that doing this multiple times in a (D1N) session may cause it to eventually have problems. In my experience, if you do the pasting action 15+ times, you might end up with the program performing slower and slower until things just stop working. I suspect there's some kind of memory leak in this 'feature'. If you have a lot of data to paste, try to paste a few times, save the data file, reopen it (may even have to exit & restart D1N), and keep on going.

Anyway, the pasting procedure is simple as I said before. Highlight the entire thing in Excel (or as much of it as you need, keeping point #3 above in mind), including the headers, and copy it to the clipboard. Go into D1N, highlight the first row in the appropriate grid, the same way you did to copy it out of D1N in the first place, and hit Paste. The software will work at it for a bit (may even show "Not Responding" for a period of time, in my experience), but should eventually paste in your data.