Roles: Site admin

Note: For older sites, there may be two options for importing contacts:

You will want to choose the first one (People and companies in your group's community) as this is the new one that will be used, and the other one will eventually be discontinued.

If you need to switch from one to the other, you can export the list for the old one (Contact information for people who cannot login to the site) and then import it into the new one.

Go to the Import & Export page

Setting & Admin > Import & Export

or

Search the menu for "import" or "export"

Select what kind of information you would like to import

In this case, we'll be importing contacts, so we'll click the import link in the contacts row.

Review the available field names and upload your csv

Required fields include: First name and Last name.  You do not have to worry about the titles matching exactly. You can manually link up columns in the next step (called mapping fields)

To upload your csv, click "choose file", select a file on your computer, and then click the "proceed to file test" button.

Not sure what a csv is? Click here to read about them.

File test and manage field mapping

You should see at least a few fields mapped on the next page, showing the first ten entires of your csv so that you can verify the site is reading the csv correctly. You MUST have the First name and Last name headings in the mapped fields, or none of your entries will import.

Need to map more fields? Or check fields that were already mapped?

Expand the "Manage mappings from csv to import" heading. You will see a list of the available titles, with a drop down that lists all of the headings in your csv that have not already been mapped. You can now mix and match the data as appropriate.  When you're finished, click "adjust mappings".  If you wish to reset it to its defaults (what was automatically mapped), then click "reset mappings".

Click the heading "fields that are already mapped" at the bottom of the list to view the fields that have already been mapped.

Continue checking the file test at the bottom of the page until you are satisfied with your import, and then click the "proceed with import button".

Importing rows

Once you click "proceed with import" your file will be imported in batches. if you have a lot of contacts (upwards of 1000) this may take a few minutes.

Once the upload has completed, you will see a report noting how many rows there were in total, the number of records created, how many were updated, and if there were any errors.

If your import had zero errors, congratulations! You can now navigate back to the contacts page to see your new contacts!

Did you end up with some errors?

No worries, there should be a file you can download that will let you see the error for each row. The most common errors are missing required fields (noted above in the section "Review the available field names and upload your csv").

You can edit the error file directly, save it, and re-upload only the entries that had errors.

If you choose to upload the entire file again, entries that already exist in the system will be duplicated.

Exporting Contacts

On the Import & Export page, click the "export" link across from contacts (over on the right hand side).

This will export all contacts in the system and their data into a csv file.