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  • Importing contacts/members with no email address
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Author Topic: Importing contacts/members with no email address  (Read 3451 times)

bixgomez

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Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 09, 2010, 10:27:46 am
Greetings!

I am working with an organization (of which I am also a member) whose database is littered with members that have NO EMAIL ADDRESSES!

Is it possible to ignore the email requirement when importing contacts or members?

I have set all of the blanks to "no@email.add", but that's kind of klunky...

Thanks!

Erik Hommel

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 09, 2010, 11:44:00 am
I am not sure if you can solve this with the standard import. If you have more issues with data quality I would suggest creating an import script using the CiviCRM API's. Are you familiar with them?
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Dave Greenberg

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 09, 2010, 05:45:55 pm
CiviCRM requirement for creating an 'Individual' contact record is either 'Email' OR 'First Name' and 'Last Name'. I think the import should follow that rule. However you may need to modify the default Duplicate Matching (strict) rule for Individuals (Administer >> Manage >> Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts) to match on first and last name instead of email address.
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bixgomez

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 09, 2010, 11:51:08 pm
Dave, that did not seem to work. 

It's kind of insane, really -- yes, many of my contacts do not have email addresses.  BUT, I AM NO LONGER EVEN IMPORTING EMAIL ADDRESSES!

I have the email address fields as "Do not import" -- and yet, whenever I try to run an import, I am told "Missing required field: Email Address" for 192 records!

bixgomez

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 10, 2010, 12:28:29 am
OK, now I see what is happening...

The contacts that are coming up as having "missing email address" are, in fact, missing first and last names.

In most cases, they do, in fact, have email addresses!

So, I fear this is some kind of bug -- after all, shouldn't the error indicate missing FIRST AND LAST NAMES?

Donald Lobo

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 10, 2010, 05:57:07 am

Can you reproduce this on our demo server. Please attach the csv file you used to reproduce this issue

thanx

lobo
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bixgomez

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 11, 2010, 10:54:13 pm
Lobo ~ again, no I can not upload all of this personal data onto the demo site.

However, this truly is what is going on.

What is missing are FIRST and LAST NAMES -- not email addresses.

I am not even importing email addresses!

So, it seems obvious to me that the issue is that the wrong error message is coming up...

Hershel

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 12, 2010, 03:32:51 am
Could you take one row of the CSV file that has this error, change the names and create a small test CSV file with just that one row? Then you could reproduce the error on the demo site and then upload that file (with no real data) here.
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bixgomez

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 13, 2010, 01:00:08 am
Quote from: Erik Hommel on April 09, 2010, 11:44:00 am
I am not sure if you can solve this with the standard import. If you have more issues with data quality I would suggest creating an import script using the CiviCRM API's. Are you familiar with them?

Erik, no, I am not familiar with them, but I am willing to learn!  I have a fairly straightforward data set, but the built-in import feature is giving me all kinds of grief.  Where can I find info on import APIs?  How do they work?

Erik Hommel

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Re: Importing contacts/members with no email address
April 13, 2010, 01:08:45 am
The API's give you a structured way of adding/retrieving/updating data in CiviCRM from your own code. More general information:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviCRM+Public+APIs.

What you would have to do is develop a bit of code that collects your input data, puts them in order and then calls the API (for instance for creating a contact) with the right parameters. I have used it a number of times, and it depends on the quality of your input data how much coding is required. I have posted an example on the wiki, but bear in mind that in the example quite a lot is created (contact, relationships, tags, groups):
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Using+CiviCRM+APIs+-+Code+Snippets#UsingCiviCRMAPIs-CodeSnippets-ExampleofconversionusingAPI%27s%28contact%2Cgroup%2Ctag%2Clocation%2Crelationship%29
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
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  • Importing contacts/members with no email address

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