Very unhelpful eror message

[permaculturegeek]

When importing contacts with a mapping to EXTERNAL ID, the system throws an error if you have a non-unique value in your external ID field in the import file.
"Sorry but we are not able to provide this at the moment." and DB: File Exists
Given the lack of formatting, it's possible that thi error comes from MySQL rather than from civi, but a more explanatory message would be helpful.

[JonGold]

I'd open a bug report on issues.civicrm.org on this; a duplicate external ID shouldn't cause the import to fail (though now that you mention it, I've seen it before myself).  It should be treated the same way as, say, an invalid state/province.

[petednz]

But we agree that External IDs have to be unique?

[JonGold]

Yes - but they should be rejected as an invalid contact, instead of crashing the import.