Importing a blank field with "Update" does not "blank" the relevant field

[ChrisKeefe]

Civi import is unable to lay blank fields in a csv over existing data in contact records - see all of the threads and the issue below.
Can someone confirm that this acknowledged bug has no future development planned, and offer guidance on next steps toward resolution?

I've confirmed via the demo site that this is still a standing issue, the issues page appears to claim that there is no planned fix, and I see no relevant MIH campaigns running. I am an over-committed end user with limited admin and no development background. Anything I can do to move this along?


http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,20647.msg86364.html#msg86364
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,1558.0.html
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,5933.msg26060.html#msg26060
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,5698.0.html

issue: https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2980

[petednz]

hi chris - this may not seem like much of a suggestion if you have MANY contacts you are updating, but I just checked and Batch Update via Profile does 'copy' a blank field down a column

hence if you were dealing with hundreds, not thousands, and you could identify the contacts that need data nullifying - then you could set your self up a Profile and delete the data that way

like i say, no idea if this is helpful in your context but ... :-)

[ChrisKeefe]

Pete,
In my case, Batch Update via Profile is failing as well, leaving me with no UI option for blanking these records in batches. This issue appears to be specific to the "Home Address" fields I'm trying to clear, and leaves us with manual, each-by-each editing. Having just spent a lot of political capital extolling Civi's virtues, I'm feeling pretty heartbroken about this situation.

Below, I've outlined the apparent issue. I have used batch update to blank fields in bulk in the past, but it does not seem to function properly when updating "Home Address" fields. I've tested in Drupal CiviCRM v4.2.19, and on the Drupal v4.5 demo site. Both attempts failed.

I built profiles to test all six impacted home address fields in a few configurations (Street Address, Additional Address 1, City, State, Postal, Country). I "batch updated" via these profiles on targeted sets of records, and found that the feature was able to change, but unable to "blank" any of these fields. 

I attempted to batch update only home address fields, or both Home and Main address fields at once.
I successfully blanked main address fields in the same update that failed to blank home address fields.
I successfully changed home address fields, in the same profiles that would not blank home address fields.
I attempted to batch update records where "Home address" was the Primary address, and records where it was not.
I manually emptied the fields in the batch update GUI, and I used the "click the icon at the top of the column to apply the first field data" feature.
I attempted to batch update with 3 home address fields at a time, and with all six together.
I attempted to batch update a single record, and up to 50 records at a time.

Each time, the Home Address fields I attempted to blank were left unchanged. Home address fields can be modified. Main Address fields, on the other hand, can be blanked.

Admins, if this needs a new thread b/c not about import, feel free to relocate but link. I kept it here to highlight the fact that there appears to be no way to batch blank Home Address fields via the GUI. One-by-one cleanup of our 300 records will be painful, and would be impossible at scale.

[petednz]

Chris - is it worth setting up a tiny example on the demo site so others can poke there nose in

[ChrisKeefe]

Done. There are two sample records in the group "HOME/MAIN test", each one has both home and main addresses. One has Home primary, and one has Main primary.

The profiles HOME/MAIN addresses and HOME ADDRESSES should make it easy to poke at this issue.

*EDIT 2014.12.15 - the Demo Site has been refreshed. these profiles and groups are gone.*

[petednz]

and this isn't an issue with trying to blank a Primary address as opposed to a non-primary address is it?

[ChrisKeefe]

and this isn't an issue with trying to blank a Primary address as opposed to a non-primary address is it?

Correct. This issue occurs whether or not the Home address is the primary.

[ChrisKeefe]

A little worried that this thread is lagging without any resolution or next step.

To recap - It appears that Home Address fields cannot be "blanked" using any GUI-based batch process.
It has been confirmed that Import does not do this in the issues linked below, and Batch Update via Profile appears to be similarly ineffective.

I would like to know:

• Is this something the dev team might consider taking on?
• Is there anything I can do as a non-developer to advance the case for this issue

Thanks,

[JonGold]

Hi Chris,

Since you can replicate the problem on the demo site, you should probably submit a bug report on http://issues.civicrm.org.  Be sure to give the steps to replicate the bug on the demo site, reference this forum thread, and give as much info as you can from the list on this page: http://book.civicrm.org/user/current/the-civicrm-community/bug-reporting/

Jon

[Donald Lobo]

Might want to search the issue database, since i suspect there might be one or more issues similar to this one that are already in the issue tracker

Your best bet as a non-developer would be to hire a developer to take a look and submit code that fixes the bug in either import or batch profile or both

If you do so, please post a simple spec / plan of what the flow is so folks can ensure it does not conflict with other paths

lobo

[ChrisKeefe]

John, Donald:
Our small nonprofit is, unfortunately, not well-resourced enough to invest in development at this time.

I'd be happy to create a new bug report to track this. Please confirm that this is the correct next step, given the related but incomplete bug, closed in June of '12: https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2980.


The issue I've encountered here includes this bug, and also that Batch Update via Profile is not functioning as expected, leaving no GUI-based way to blank home address fields.

Does this merit a new bug report?

[JonGold]

I'd file these as two separate bug reports, yes - though as you can probably appreciate, most CiviCRM users aren't well-resourced enough to invest in development, especially if the bug doesn't directly affect them, so filing the bug report isn't likely to generate much traction.

[Donald Lobo]

might be easier to comment on the incomplete bug report and request it be reopened. If resources are not going to be put on it, it will be assigned to a version in the future

lobo

[xavier]

Hi Chris,

How to handle empty fields is tricky, as it might sometimes mean that the user is trying to empty the field, and sometimes that you want to leave it as it was before (eg for import). Not sure what's the most natural in every situation, but that it behaves differently based on the type of address is a bug IMO... but one that doesn't bother enough people and potentially tricky enough to fix without side effects that it's unlikely to be tackled soon without extra incentive (err, money or code) unfortunately.

As for your need, is this to clean up some mess from an import or something of the sort? one option can be to mark the fields to be emptied (eg put "X" from the batch update) and then run a simple sql query ( update civicrm_address set city="" where city="X") from mysqladmin or mysql cli.

X+