Blank contact records after import – how to select and delete?

[Wes Reimer]

CiviCRM created about 10 blank contacts during an import (organizations not individuals). These appear to be completely blank except for 3 of them which have email addresses (see attached screenshot).

• Why would CiviCRM import/create these in the first place? Isn't a name required? Why wouldn't it automatically skip them?
• How can I select and delete these records? Assuming I can't do it in CiviCRM, is it safe to delete them directly from the database using phpMyAdmin? Would I just delete from the civicrm_contact table or are there related records that I should look for?

Thanks,
Wes

[JonGold]

Import doesn't check all the possible ways a contact can be invalid, unfortunately.

Getting blank records is quite likely a sign that something went wrong during import - for instance, in older versions it was possible to import contributions for contacts that didn't exist, which would cause this problem.  If you're using "external identifier" in your imports, I'd look to see if the blank records have an external ID and correlate that to your import data.

Also, I most often see this on a second import - you do an original import, then use "Update" to import more data, and overwrite the first name.

Assuming this is legitimately as you say - your original data set contains records with no first names - you can find them with Search Builder (in the Search menu).  Contact Type = Individual, First Name is Empty (or Null).

[Wes Reimer]

Thank you Jon. Yes the original data had blank names, I just assumed Civi would skip them. Thank you for pointing out the Search Builder feature – I hadn't tried that yet!