Migrating and importing contact details from another site
Updated on 27-March-2018 at 3:27 PM
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This is a step-by-step guide on how to migrate all your contacts from one Online Business site to a new Online Business site. If you are Migrating your entire site, please ensure you have followed the initial steps outlined in the main site migration article .
Use this guide for creating a copy of your contacts. For this article the site you are migrating from will be known as the source sitewhile the site you are migrating to will be known as the destination site.
Contacts migration is a process that will require you to:
- Generate a report on your source site with all your contacts.
- Download this report as an excel file.
- Edit the excel file to match the import format and save as a CSV file.
- Import the CSV file into your Destination site customer database
Generate a Report with all your contacts on your source site
To export all your contacts from your source site you'll need to go to Reports > Create A Customer Report in the top menu. Then click on Add Customer Report in the Action box. A note here, the process to export all your Orders, Opportunities, Bookings and Cases is exactly the same.
For this How-To you only want to export Contacts Only so you can re-import them into your destination site. The next step will be to select the fields that you need to export. You must follow the diagram below and tick only these boxes that have been ticked in the diagram. This will ensure that the excel file you generate will have the fields you need for importing into your destination site.
After you've selected the fields you'll need to click to go to the next stage. Now you'll have the option to set Field Filters for your standard fields and your custom CRM fields as well - leave these all blank - you want to capture every customer in your database so don't apply any filters. Go straight to Generate New Report
You should now see a list of all the customers in your reports and their details as well. At the bottom of this list there is an Export Report button. Click this to save the excel file to your local machine. After you have saved the file to your machine you'll need to click next and then give the report a name (e.g All Contacts Report) and save it in your Online Business. You need to save your report on your source site so if you've made any mistakes you can go back to re-open the report and fix it later.
Edit the Report to match Import Format
Now that you have exported all your source contacts to an excel file on your local machine you can open your destination site, go to CRM > Cusotmers and then click on the Contacts (Advance) option. You should now be able to to Download Import Template file and open it in excel. It will look like this:
What you need to do is open the excel file with the contacts from your source site that you exported to your local machine before. Your aim is to move the columns within this excel file so they appear in this order from left to right to match the columns in the template that you downloaded.
- CRM ID
- Email 1 (Primary)
- Title
- Full Name
- Firstname
- Lastname
- Company
- Work Phone
- Work Fax
- Home Phone
- Home Fax
- Cell Phone
- Web Address
- Work Address 1
- Work Address 2
- Work Address City
- Work Address State
- Work Address Zipcode
- Work Address Country
- Home Address 1
- Home Address 2
- Home Address City
- Home Address State
- Home Address Zipcode
- Home Address Country
- Username
- Password
- DOB
- Secure Zone Expiry
- Customer Type
- Lead Source
- Industry
- Rating
- Opt-In Status
To move columns, for each one you have to follow this process:
1. Select the column you want to move (the first one we select in this example is CRM ID) and right click the on the column letter (A,B,C...) above the column. The whole column will be highlighted and you should see a number of options in the pop-up. Choose Cut as we want to move the whole column.
2. Now you need to insert this column in its right place. If you have selected CRM ID then you want to insert it on the far left side of the spreadsheet, the next column you select will be Email 1 (Primary and you will insert this to the right of CRM ID and so on as you move down the list. Right click on the column letter you want to place your column to the left of and then pick the Insert Cut Cells option that comes up.
3. When you reach the Address fields, you will need to insert an empty column for Work Address 2 and Home Address 2 as these do not exist in the original exported excel but are required in the import template. Just right click on the column letter and click Insert to insert a blank column and type the column title in the first row i.e "Work Address 2" and "Home Address 2"
4. Once you've gone through the whole sheet and placed all the columns in the correct order it will look like this. Your columns should start at column A with "CRM ID" and end at column AH with "Opt-In Status". You'll see the template file you downloaded before also starts at column A and ends at column AH and you've matched this format.
5. Save your contacts formatted in the right order as a CSV file so your destination site can import the file.
Import Contacts into Destination Site
With the contacts CSV file ready you can import it directly into your destination site. Just browse for the file on your local drive.
- The file type to choose is CSV
- First row does contain headers so tick this box
Click Next and then click Import. Your contacts should now be moved from your source site to your destination site.