Changing Contact Type

[Digital]

What is the appropriate method to convert a individual to a household? I know it can be done (unintentionally) through custom forms, but I haven't found a place to do it legit.

[Yashodha Chaku]

You can write the query

UPDATE `civicrm_contact` SET `contact_type` = "Household" WHERE `id`=102

HTH
-Yashodha

[Dave Greenberg]

Please note that running these SQL queries is not really a "legit" way to do this - and can cause data integrity issues if you don't do it correctly. There is no wy to change contact type within the user interface - so if you're dealing with one or a few contacts - I would just delete the Individual contact(s) and create the Household(s).

If this is not an option and you want to use SQL - AND assuming you are working with version 1.9 or earlier - you will need to run two additional queries on top of the one posted by Yashoda below. (All query examples use 102 as the contact ID - you'll need to find that value for the records you are modifying.)

DELETE from `civicrm_individual` WHERE `contact_id` = 102;
INSERT into `civicrm_household`(contact_id, household_name) VALUES (102, 'The Household Name Here');

[anniekin]

In Dave's reply, I notice he said "if working with CiviCRM 1.9 or earlier." Has anything changed with regard to changing contact types in 2.0?

-Is there still no way to change contact type within the user interface?
-If not, is there any semi-legit process out there?

I'm guessing no, but I thought I'd ask to see what, if anything has changed to make this easier in 2.0?

What I'm looking to do -- I would like to convert some individuals to organizations. I know how to do it manually in the user interface and that that would probably be cleaner and easier for me than trying to convert all the data via SQL, but I have a bunch of contacts, so neither options sounds great.

[Donald Lobo]

In 2.0 this is a bit easier since there is no separate indiv/household/org table. they are all in the same table. There is no user interface to change this as yet.

lobo

[xavier]

I did the sql dirty change on about 100 contacts about a month ago, and so far I haven't seen any problem indeed (on a 2.0)

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