Required fields & importing

[lgel-sw]

I'm trying to import our previous database (exported to csv) to our shiny new CiviCRM install. Our company has been around for a while, and we have a mix of different contact data: physical addresses, email addresses and sometimes even multiple of both.

So far so good, CiviCRM seemed to support that. But when importing, I get the following message in my testing set: "Missing required fields: First Name OR Email Address". This is very well possible, because we have plenty of people in our dataset that we only have a physical address of and only know the last name (combined with academic prefix or gender that makes a proper address).

Ideally, I would like to 'unrequire' both the first name and the email address field.

A workaround was suggested on IRC: add a dummy email address and add the 'do not email' as 1. This is what I did for my test set (using test@test.com), and even multiple similar addresses. However, I still get the same error for the fields without a First Name. If I import them with a dummy First Name and try to remove them later again, that is also disallowed.

Is there a way to change which fields are required? Or alternatively, to work around this problem?

[Michael McAndrew]

My understanding is that "First Name and Last Name OR an email" is our requirement.  I can see how Mr Smith is a valid amount of data for a contact record but I am not sure how you are going to get around that.

I still get the same error for the fields without a First Name

Can you be more specific on this? I would be suprised if you got an error importing Last name: Smith Email test@test.com. If you did, you should try and replicate on the demo, and if you can, please report a bug: http://book.civicrm.org/user/current/the-civicrm-community/bug-reporting/ https://civicrm.org/bug-reporting

Is there a way to change which fields are required?

Nope - it is hard coded as "First Name and Last Name OR an email"

[lgel-sw]

Thanks for your reply. I fiddled a bit more, and found out that part of the problem why the workaround didn't work, is that we have multiple columns of email addresses: Email (main), Email (Alternative), Email (assistent) etc. Obviously, most people only have Email (main). It seems that the import function considers the email to be missing if either of the 'email' fields are empty (if correct, you should be able to replicate). This seems like a bug? I would be happy to try and replicate on the demo - can you link it to be sure I have the right one?

Too bad by the way that this is hardcoded... I hope that will be changed. Especially in the future more and more people will be with unknown email address, but only with messenger handles, account names on social media etc. It would be great if every civicrm owner could eventually set their own 'required fields'.

[Donald Lobo]

yes. moving away from required fields would be a great enhancement and improvement. Any chance you can spearhead the work with regard to this?

thanx

lobo