CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

*** This issue has been resolved!  But not sure how- just worked on a better mapping- and imported fewer fields.

I'm really really really hoping someone can help me out here.

I haven't been able to import ANY contributions because the import file doesn't contain the CiviCRM Contact ID.

We can't be the ONLY organization that receives external contribution data files that can't and don't know the CiviCRM Contact ID, right?

We DO have:

Email address AND External Identifier, as well as the standard Transaction information.  This is definitely enough to get the contributions associated with the right people.

and the Contacts ARE already in the system.

I basically posted this on the forum the other day, but after getting only one reply that I appreciated, but can't use, I'm trying to post this "fresh", hoping someone new will see it, like Donald Lobo or Eileen or someone who was a programmer for the Contributions importer.

I don't know how we're EVER going to import contributions if we have to know the civiCRM contact ID in the external (Blackbaud/Kintera) system, and so I'm getting very depressed.  Please help. 

Pete, hm!  I wonder if something ELSE is causing the import to fail? 

I'll test using your file idea.

When you map an import do you have a bunch of fields (sometimes in red but not on all browsers) with asterisks that say "match to contact"?  This has been what's been making me think this is required.  See my attached image.

My mappings still don't seem to save...

OK - it worked!

It might have been the CSV?  Who knows!  I just remapped- a little more carefully, and the contributions went in.

Thanks for keeping me calm LOL.

By the way, if I create event Contribution Pages and then import the Campaign name mapped to the Contribution page field- if the names match will that be enough to match donations to Campaigns?

I'm equally having a frustrating time importing Participants.
The field that the error report says are missing are not listed as available fields to import in the drop-down lists.
Seems that what gets exported as fields are not the same as what is in the database. So there is no way to ensure integrity of the dataset if there is not a corresponding mapping between the two.

Installation:
Joomla 1.7 & CiviCRM 4.0.4
Using CSV UTF-8 file modified in LibreOffice.

I have also tried this on the Joomla 1.6 demo and get the same results.

CiviCRM instructions say to have "Event", "Event Title", "Participant Status" fields included. So, I did so.
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC40/1.+Participants+-+Upload+Data

I am importing exisitng data from a conference managed in Filemaker. I have a clean CSV file, added the additional fields, pared down only the fields I need to import and cleaned the data.

Interesting is that I am importing as Participants because all the custom data I created for Profiles used in an Event do not show up in Contact regular import. Conversely, none of the standard "Name, Address, etc." fields are listed in the Participant import dropdown mapping lists to match with the field in the CSV file.   So, I import the Contacts as Individuals first so there are Internal IDs available to match.

Upon first Participant import, I choose to "Skip" records as this is the first time importing to existing records which have no Participant ID assigned as they haven't "Registered" for the Event yet. But in order to import the Custom Data in the dataset, I can only do so through the Participant import since the Profile is assigned to Participants.
(In hindsight I suppose I could assign them to Individual and then later move things around. Will check on this.)

If I don't import as Individuals, then there are no choices in the dropdown mapping list to match to existing records.

On this first import, I didn't choose to import any Event or Participant fields. It threw back an error that "Missing required field: Provide Event ID or Event Title"

I start over again and choose "Event ID" to match the "Event ID" in the CSV file and proceed but again throws back an error "Missing required field(s) :Participant Status"

So, I go back and choose "Participant Status" to match the same from the CSV file then proceed but again thrown back an error "Missing required field(s) :Event; Participant Status" but "Participant Status" is chosen. I check a sample export of Participants I did and found that there is an additional field called "Participant Status ID". I add this to my CSV file. I then choose from the dropdown there are two choices "Participant Status" and "Particpant Status ID". So I choose to match "particpant Status" from the dropdown list to "Participant Status" in my CSV file instead and proceed but get again get the same error "Missing required field(s) :Event; Participant Status".

So, at this point I have put all the Participant and Event fields in my CSV file. I go round and round with trying to find the correct CiviCRM field in the dropdown lists to match the fields that are in my CSV file. No luck. It keeps shifting around giving me conflicting messages.

Help.