November 7, 2018

How to Make Imports Easier – Member365

If you’re a membership manager, chances are you’ve got?lots of contact data. Migrating it from spreadsheets to a new system like Member365 might seem like a daunting task, but we’re here to make it easy for you.

Here are 5 tips to make imports easier.

 

1) Check primary emails!

 

Member365 uses the ‘primary email address’ field as the unique identifier for contacts. This means that Member365:

  • Will not import multiple contacts with the same primary email address.
  • Will not import contacts that do not have a primary email address.

To keep your import experience smooth and easy, take a look through your primary email address column and ensure that each contact has a unique email.

In the event that you absolutely must import a contact?without an email, simply fill their primary email address field with a fake address!

 

2) Keep your dating format consistent

 

Irregular dating formats are confusing for people, let alone our import tool! Dating MM/DD/YYYY in one field and DD/MM/YYYY in another makes imports a headache, so spare the trouble by taking a quick look through your spreadsheets and ensuring that dating formats are consistent throughout!

 

3) Watch out for extra? spaces

 

It’s difficult for human eyes to tell the difference between one space and two. You might not have noticed the two spaces between ‘extra’ and ‘spaces’ in the header above!

Member365, on the other hand, recognizes a space just as it would any other character. This can lead to confusion during your import process, as it will treat a word followed by two spaces as totally different from the same word with one!

An easy way to check for duplicate spaces is to bring up the search button on your spreadsheet manager (CTRL+F for Windows), and hit space twice in the search field. This will scan your spreadsheets for any duplicate spacing, allowing you to correct them before your import.

 

4) Check for accented letters

 

Accented letters are not supported by Member365, and will appear post-import as a blank symbol. Take care when reviewing your spreadsheets to replace accented letters with their regular equivalents should you come across any!

 

5) Double check your spelling!

 

Human beings can deal with typo’s pretty easily. If you or I come across a word with a typo, we still ultimately know what it means.

Computers, however, are a little more picky.

If you misspell an organization name, for example, in one of your contact’s fields – Member365 will often import that data as a totally different organization! Our tool does a great job of identifying and dealing with typos and different spelling, but you can help make the process even easier by giving your spreadsheets a once-over for consistent spelling!

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