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How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

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Posted on by HardofHearing

What are some ways that email addresses for customer document layouts may be changed? A member of our sales team just informed me that a large number of those email addresses have been changed to the wrong address, and I'd like to figure out how it happened.

We have 1009 records in the document layouts table. Somehow, 401 entries were overridden with one email address. None of our sales team have permissions for configuration packages, so I'm trying to figure out how else this information may have been overwritten. There have been no mass data imports in quite some time

Any guidance would be helpful. Thanks!

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Leslie C 24 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

Sure thing!

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Jun Wang 8,152 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

Leslie, thanks for sharing. I don't have that field in NAV 2018 but it's absolutely good to know.

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Leslie C 24 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

The "Use Email from Contact" is a field in the "Customer Report Selections" table. This is table 9657. When you go to Document Layouts on the Customer Card (Customer > Document Layouts) and select the action "Select Email from Contacts", it updates this field to Yes in the table.

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Jun Wang 8,152 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

hi Leslie,

Is the Use Email from Contact on the customer card?

thanks

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Leslie C 24 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

Hello!

I know this post is a couple of months old, but we ran into something similar. After importing the Document Layouts table one of our email addresses for a particular customer was overwritten by random vendor contact email addresses.

I'm able to reproduce the issue and found that it is related to the "Use Email from Contact" field. If this is set to Yes, the email addresses will get overwritten with random emails. Here is the kicker - the overwriting of the email addresses does not happen by BC until a user opens up the Document Layout page in the UI for that customer. After importing, I always do an export and review the table data. Everytime, the email addresses are correct. However, once I open the Document Layout for the customer (from the UI) that had the "Use Email from Contact" field set to yes, the email addresses get overwritten by the system.

Our Microsoft partner believes it is related to the selected Contacts Filter being a BLOP data type. I really wish I had more information on why this is happening.

It really makes me nervous when using config packages.

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Maassimaassimo 22 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

Hi KasparsSemjonovs,

The main issue is that we cannot recreate on command the error. A lot of e-mailadresses that were uploaded in this way work perfectly. Moreover, If there would be a logic like for example;

Spaces in the e-mailaddresses

A string of e-mailaddresses

One particular symbol/letter or sign which could trigger it

Language Code

etc...

We could investigate that particular trigger and find out why this is exactly.

However, now while testing, I am constantly hoping it gives an error so I'm able to find the reason behind it. At the moment I was not able to recreate it yet but in the meantime some addresses were overwritten again. That's why I would like to really figure out if this could possibly be a bug or if it is us who did something wrong and the exact action where we are messing up.

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KasparsSemjonovs 4,511 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

Configuration packages are powerful and therefore You can do a lot with them - but there are several places/checkmarks/fields - that require extreme caution - or otherwise can make a huge mess in the table.

So if You are implying there is something strange going on - could be of some wrongly imported entries or wrong relations/values in fields.

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Maassimaassimo 22 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

Hi KasparsSemjonovs,

Thank you for your reply.

It is through configuration packages that this action is completed. I know it seems strange because logically BC shouldn't make changes once imported in Business Central. However, at the moment it does make changes for no logical reason at first sight and I am wondering if any other member of this community has encountered a similar issue.

Configuration packages is exactly the method we're using at the moment but as it is not stable, it is not a safe option to use. Invoicing is critical and contains sometimes sensitive information. That's why I would like to be able to rely on the import but we noticed; once imported, it can still be overwritten by a random string of e-mailadresses at the moment a document is created.

Kind regards

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KasparsSemjonovs 4,511 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

In BC it seems only configuration packages would make this task easier. Ask You IT department or someone who has access, to export the table in Excel. You do the changes and he can import it back.

In NAV - it was possible to take off the filter of Document Layouts - for specific customer, and You could see whole list - and list was editable and filterable.

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Maassimaassimo 22 on at

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RE: How to mass update email address in Customer Document Layouts

At the moment we do not have any report which does this action.

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