CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am importing contacts, some of whom are already members.  I am using Drupal 5.10.

Do I import them as contacts and move them to a group called members? 

Is there a way to mark them as members during import?

How do I import all their contact data at the same time?

I want the members to be able to log into Drupal, how do I synchronize CIVICRM MEMBERs and DRUPAL USERS?

Many thanks!

thanks.  that helps get the contact info in there but what about differentiating those who are members and those who are contacts or another user type?  Or the date they became a member?

ANy ideas?

I find it really helps to work in reverse. Set up some contacts/members as you want them in civiCRM - then export them with all the relevant fields. Then you know what you are aiming to do with your import. HTH

Webguy - what I was suggesting was that by doing an 'export' from civiCRM you get a really clear picture of the fields structure. Set up a few test contacts, including giving them the membership etc. Then do an export from civiCRM and from civiMember and civiContrinbute.

Then you will have a better idea of the structure. And then you will need to import the contacts, and then import the membership/contribution data.

Using an External ID really helps.

Do I import them as contacts and move them to a group called members? 

Having imported them as contacts - and having set up the Membership rules - you then do an import in to civiMember of the Membership info eg Join Date, Membership Type, Membership Status etc, and ditto for civiContribute eg Contribution Type, Amount, Source, Status etc.

And yes, I would do as much data cleaning and arranging as possible before you do the import HTH

One thing I did when importing contacts is that I added a tag "Imported" to them to identify that the record was imported into the system rather than entered directly into the system by the user.

No, it's not a custom field.  Tags are built into CiviCRM.  In fact, when I imported the contacts, it asked if I wanted to add them to any groups or add any tags.  I decided to add a tag I happened to call "Imported" to the imported records.

I mostly added the tag "Imported" so that I could back out a bad import, which I had to do, by the way.  Because all imported records were tagged as imported, I could delete all the imported records and redo the import again correctly, without accidentally deleting other records entered into the system already.

The biggest benefit of adding the "Imported" tag is you can back out any changes after you import them, since those records are tagged.  The second benefit is related with duplicate records in the system.  If people register on the site under a different e-mail address, there winds up being two records for one person.  Since the imported record is tagged as imported, it lets you know which record was user-entered and which was not, which could help you deal with duplicate records for the same person.

You can also e-mail the imported contacts without e-mailing the entire list.  So you could e-mail them and ask them to update their information, for example.

You're welcome.