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Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
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Seeing some very strange behavior after Importing excel data (Opportunity data)

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Posted on by 150

Hi

Unfortunately excel import function is playing up big time. I either have errors or 'completed import' status with 0 errors and 0 transferred. 

More concerning is that importing for one view has removed records from another view, and vice versa. The total records were reduced. 

Luckily I have the data in excel, but I'm worried more importing attempts will delete more records. 

What is going on and how can I ensure a proper import?

Thanks for your time.

I have the same question (0)
  • ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    More info:

    I'm not including this as like it's the issue every time. But on one particular instance, after trying a bulk import, failure log indicates the source/target DATE format did not match. But they are exactly the same?

    This still does not explain the wider issue of records being removed after I imported data to another view.

  • ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    I now know why some 'records' were removed and moved to different Views. You have to be very careful of the '(Do Not Modify)' columns. They are hard-coded to each record. Since they were hidden I made the mistake of deleting excel data from a template and entering new data. Now everything is muddled up because the hidden '(Do Not Modify)' cells did not change accordingly. So existing records were overwritten.

    Now I am trying to get it back to how it was, because I have the original source data in excel. But CRM is finicky with the source/target DATE format - even though it's exactly the same. What can I do to overcome this error?

  • ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    Update again..

    It seems changing the date cells to the same Country Date format in Excel worked. However, now a new error for those records when attempting to import:

    "A record was not created or updated because a duplicate of the current record already exists."

    Isn't that the point - that I'd like to overwrite the existing record with new information from my import spreadsheet? Any ideas?

  • Verified answer
    ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    Duplicating rules updated.

    I solved my problem.

    Wow - watch out for the hardcoded IDs in the '(Do Not Modify)' columns when you export data to excel. They are HIDDEN, and if you don't pay attention you overwrite those records when you import again.

    Nightmare scenario over.

  • ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    A question arises from all of this.

    How can we bulk-import new records i.e. ones that do not have any record coding assigned already (empty in 'Do Not Modify' columns) because they do not exist in CRM?

  • Suggested answer
    LuHao Profile Picture
    40,892 on at

    Hi ETconsultant,

    I would recommend you download the template for data import first, then use it to imoprt your records.

    Go to Advacned Settings > Data Management > Templates for Data Import, select the entity and download it.

    pastedimage1587093210006v1.png     pastedimage1587093230679v2.png

  • ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    Ah ok, so does mean CRM will automatically create the ID codes for the record when the import file has nothing in the 'Do Not Modify' columns? (i.e. for a new record that has not yet been created in the CRM environment?)

  • Verified answer
    LuHao Profile Picture
    40,892 on at

    Hi ETconsultant,

    Yes, that's it.

    In addition, you also need to pay attention to the Duplicate Detection Rules.

    pastedimage1587100391526v1.png

  • ETconsultant Profile Picture
    150 on at

    Indeed. thank you very much as always.

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