Address parsing

[Paddy]

Complete newbie here...I'm trying to import a CSV file of our members (over 1300) and have the street numbers in a separate column as we do need to be able to sort/send email by street number occasionally. The street numbers are simply not importing - not a single one of them has come in, despite having address parsing checked.

In the preview, where it shows the columns being imported, the street number is there, but after the actual import - nada.

What can I do to fix this? Is there an additional step(s) to take to make this happen? I really, really, don't want to have edit all of those entries by hand. 

[Hardwick]

is the idea to send some mail block by block? so all members within some address number range? otherwise what other criteria could you use in advanced search for example...why not just search by a particular street then select the exact ones you want (after regular import). For the former, suppose a separate number custom data field searchable by range could work. Can you give more details of exactly how / why you target in this way? Or multiple dwellings within a single address?

[JonGold]

If you can replicate the problem on the sandbox server, I'd open a bug report.  Any field that's exposed for import should allow for import.

Also - I'd try to find the simplest case that triggers this bug.  If you can trigger this bug with a CSV file that's only got one record and a minimum of fields, you can attach the file to the bug report, which makes for easy testing.

[Paddy]

Ok - I was able to reproduce the same issue on the sandbox server. I imported two records and once again - no street number came in.

Question: what am I supposed to import the street number AS? I've been leaving it as "street address" - so both it and the street field have the same title, which may be the issue. If it should be something else, what should it be? (Sorry - fairly new to databases as well...I'm a web designer, not a database expert!)

And further - I'm not familiar enough with CivicRM to know whether it will do this or not - but can I search for a range of addresses on a particular street? If that's possible, I can go back to Excel and create another version of the spreadsheet with those two fields merged. However, the issue with that is that I'm also using MailChimp and it has all the street numbers in a separate field, so I can't very well sync between the two if I don't have it in CivicRM as well. MailChimp is not very good for creating/using groups as they're static and can't be changed even manually after you create them.

[joanne]

@Paddy
A few things...

First, you would be better off testing things on the demo site, not the sandbox. The demo site will be closest to your site.

Second, the importer doesn't know what you want it to do, it can only do what you tell it to do.  If the column with the address numbers is imported as street address and it comes before the street field which is also imported as street address then the number may be imported first but it will be overwritten by the street field during the import.  If you reversed the order of the columns in your csv file then you would end up with the address numbers not the street names in your database.   This shows that you are indeed new to databases and this could be a real problem.  I think you need to learn more about database basics before you try to set up CiviCRM.

Third,  if you import the full street address  (eg 14 Smith St) and you have address parsing checked, then civicrm will parse the address on import and you will be able to export the street number and street  name as separate fields.

Fourth, I believe syncing with mail chimp has not been easy (no personal experience with mail chimp) although that is changing http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,27871.msg138703.html#msg138703.

And to anyone reading this... Should someone be able to include the same field twice when doing an import?  Or is it too complicated to stop that happening and the assumption is that people who are importing need to know what they are doing?

[Paddy]

Thanks, Joanne.

T'was as I suspected once I started to think about it; the street number was being overwritten by the street name. I may be relatively new to databases, but I do understand the logic and two fields with the same name aren't going to work. The parsing had me confused - I should have realized that it didn't mean anything terribly different in the context of a database than it does in the context of good old grammar.  Now that I understand that, I'll concatenate the two fields in Excel and update from the revised CSV file. BTW - I'm far from the only person who was confused by this, as I found a number of posts on various forums from people trying to import street numbers into CiviCRM from a file where they are in a separate field.

Ideally, if all goes well, I would like to switch to using CiviCRM for our email newsletter and stop using MailChimp; especially given that the syncing extension is still in beta. 

As for the sandbox testing - that was recommended to me by JonGold above, and when I got to the demo page, it appeared that the sandbox had the more recent version of CiviCRM; I was thinking I had 4.5 installed - when it's actually 4.4.5, so yes, the demo would be closer. Anyway - I don't think in this case (ID10T error ) it made a difference, but going forward if I have any issues requiring testing, I will remember to use the demo version.

This has been a long and laborious process; I started with a very messy data set of our ratepayers' group, exported from Sumac (it hadn't been managed well - full of inaccuracies and duplicates, which I cleaned up) and then had to verify and add in by hand another 1000 or so members for whom we only had paper membership forms. I was thrilled to discover CiviCRM - it does way more than Sumac does and it doesn't cost several hundred dollars a year, and once I get the hang of it, I'll be able to get a few of the other directors helping out, which is something we couldn't do with Sumac. (One user license, one computer - no online access). I'm sure I'll be spending more than a bit of time reading both the documentation and the forum posts...