CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I have a 4.1.2 version of civicrm running.  I'm importing contact data to update contact information.  I have some custom fields where they are multiple selections (checkboxes).  When I do the import, it removes the old/existing values on that contact and stores the new imported value.  I would like it to behave by adding the new imported value to the already existing values.  Is this possible in this version?  Is there a fix in another version I can take a look at the code to see how it was done?

EDIT: even adding multiple values to the CSV file, it only uses the first value to set for the checkbox type custom field.  Shouldn't it at least add all that are listed in the CSV if I map them correctly?

Appreciate any help.

Ian

The import is similar to your example.  Say like you said...contact already has banana.  My csv contains one line for one contact with email and name to associate with correct contact then the custom field will be apple, orange. so imagine this:

John, Doe, jdoe@gmail.com, apple, orange

Then when I import,  I associate the values with the fields.  I set apple and orange to the same custom field.  It will only pick up the first one though.  So banana gets wiped out, orange is ignored and apple becomes the new value. 

So your idea, which I have tried, of exporting the existing values, then combining with the new ones, then finally importing does not work because it only grabs the first value and ignores the rest.

OK, I got it.  The multiple options need to be comma separated but also surrounded by quotation marks.  While the single fields do not need quotes.  Its the quotes that make the difference.  Thanks. 

But I wonder if they will ever fix it so we don't need to do this roundabout way.

I may be able to implement the fix but I already looked into the code and estimated a huge amount of hours because some things may need to be re-engineered a bit.  I also came up with a hack but that still needs more time to work on it.

Appreciate the help.

Ian