Author Topic: Importing Contacts - Invalid data...? (Read 1520 times)

Tachikoma · December 12, 2007, 10:12:14 am

Hello everyone.

I am trying to import my contact list. I've got 3100 records, and Im running it on my own box via WAMP.

I have gone through the data, and it doesnt appear to have any strange characters. What are the standards for validation in CiviCRM?
Can I set field validation rules? Can I set some fields as being required/not required?

Thanks,

Tachikoma

Dave Greenberg · December 12, 2007, 07:19:08 pm

Validation rules are different for different fields in different records. As far as required / not required - most standard (not-custom) fields are optional for contact records with the following exceptions:

Individual contacts require either Email OR First + Last Name
Organization contacts require Organization Name
Households require Household Name

The best way to debug an import problem is to desensitize a small subset of your data and try importing it on the demo. Save the import mapping you used an post back to the forum with results / any specific errors or problems. In general, the import should give you pretty specific info as to which field(s) have invalid data in a given row - so you should also post that back w/ the data causing the error.

Tachikoma · December 13, 2007, 10:08:29 am

Ah, this is exactly what I was looking for.

So then if I am only using this CiviCRM installation for keeping logs of my clients, does it matter if I import the contacts as households, orgs, or individuals?

I realize the great functionality of being able to make an individual a member of a household or org, but I only need one set of contacts.

The data that I get from my legacy database/phonelist does not have a seperate field for first/last name, it's just NAME.

For my application do you think it would be better to split up the name into first/last, or should I just import my contacts as orgs or households? What I need to know I guess, is, will be the consequences of importing my contacts as households rather than individuals?

Thanks so much!

Donald Lobo · December 13, 2007, 10:45:07 am

all contacts are created equal

We specifically use individual contacts in online contributions / event registrations and the link to user registration. That might be an issue if you only use households. You might want to tweak and experiment with it

lobo

Tachikoma · December 13, 2007, 11:08:03 am

Great, thanks guys!

I successfully imported all 3100 contacts as households. I didn't need to break the list into pieces either, import process took about 1 minute.

I'm interested in the update process, I'm excited to think that it will actually update changes to records, not just overwrite entire rows.

My next goal is to expose the CiviCRM Home on the Joomla Site (sans the Administer CiviCRM ability/link).
I'll post a new question

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Author Topic: Importing Contacts - Invalid data...? (Read 1520 times)

Tachikoma

Importing Contacts - Invalid data...?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Importing Contacts - Invalid data...?

Tachikoma

Re: Importing Contacts - Invalid data...?

Donald Lobo

Re: Importing Contacts - Invalid data...?

Tachikoma

Re: Importing Contacts - Invalid data...?