Importing Excel to Globally Add?

Shelly Survance · July 2017

Hello all,

I'm wanting to take an Excel list with names of people that I have in my database and import it into RE so I can give these constituents a new attribute. Is this possible or do I need to go one by one and add the attribute to each record?

Thanks for the help in advance!

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

Do you have ID's in your excel list? Basic question was posed yesterday about bringing in data from Excel. Please see this thread from yesterday. https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/147/34998

Joanne Felci 2 · July 2017

Hi Shelly!

Are these people already in RE?

If so you can do a query to find them and a global add of the attribute

If they are not already in RE you can import the file to set up constituent records, and you want to click the box on the 4th tab (Summary tab) that says 'Create an output query of the records imported'

You can then use this query to do the global add of the attributes

Here is a link to a KnowledgeBase article on how to do a Constituent Import and it has a link within that to a sample data file

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

Shelly,

Should probably also have asked about how many records are you talking about? 10-20, hundreds, thousands? I'm assuming you can't group these records easily in a query. If the list is small enough I've done a query Specific Record one of and just entered name to pull each record in (F7) takes you right to look up. Run the query and then use the query for a global add.

If for some reason you end up having to do manually, one cheat is to set the default window to attribute so that each record when you search for it at least opens on that tab.

Jen Claudy · July 2017

If you are importing new constituent records, you can import the Attribute as part of that same process.

I'm assuming you're not particularly familiar with Import, so I highly recommend you look for another recent post about importing (actually, I think I'm remembering a blog post).

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

Before we get way off on importing constituent records and muddying the waters, from Shelly's orginal post:

"an Excel list with names of people that I have in my database"

Ryan Hyde · July 2017

Glad to see I'm not the only one with not enough to do today. Fridays in the summer, right?

Looks like you've all got this one sorted though. Have a good weekend

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

I don't know if it's 'not enough to do' as much as revolting against what I have to do today. Already did the 'fun' tasks. Don't want to do the others.

Hanging out on the forums is more fun!

Jen Claudy · July 2017

Good call, JoAnn. I missed that part.

Another time saver, if the Constituent IDs are not in the Excel data, is to use a Constituent Record Default Set.

Add the Attribute data to the Default Set, set RE to open records on the Attributes Tab (or not, the Default Set will work either way) and do Shift+F2 on each record. (You first need to check the box at the bottom of the Default Set window to [Load Default Values Now] and then load them on one record by clicking [OK]. Shift+F2 is the shortcut that loads the most recently used Default Set.)

Gina Gerhard · July 2017

A few times I've had to work with an Excel list of names only - no RE IDs.

In order to get the RE IDs over to the Excel list, you can:

Export out all your constituent records with name fields and their RE ID - into a master list.
Use VLOOKUP to match the names in your file to the names in your master list.
- You may get multiple matches here - like you may have 3 John Smiths.
- Find those problems first and flag those -- to do manually or later.
For the clear matches, you can then accept those RE IDs into your Excel file.
Then you can perform an import using your now complete Excel file to bring the data onto those RE records.

These exercises will teach you to NEVER EVER NOT have the RE ID in your data files !!

Shelly Survance:

Hello all,

I'm wanting to take an Excel list with names of people that I have in my database and import it into RE so I can give these constituents a new attribute. Is this possible or do I need to go one by one and add the attribute to each record?

Thanks for the help in advance!

Shelly Survance · July 2017

Shelly Survance:

Hello all,

I'm wanting to take an Excel list with names of people that I have in my database and import it into RE so I can give these constituents a new attribute. Is this possible or do I need to go one by one and add the attribute to each record?

Thanks for the help in advance!

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the suggestions. I might need to clarify a little. I have a list of names (first and last) and emails. They were pulled from another software we're using to send a bi-weekly eNewsletter. I know these people are in the database because I pulled the list from my database. The Excel is a list of people that I need to go into RE and mark that they do not want to receive our eNews anymore. We have this marked with an attribute. Is there any way that I can take the Excel list that I have and add an attribute to all these people on this list that they do not want to get our eNews anymore? It's about 1,000 records and I don't really want to have to do this manually.

Thanks again.

Alan French · July 2017

I would do this using the email addresses then, rather than the names, as they're more likely to be unique. You'll need to create a constituent query with the criteria "Phone Number one of..." and paste in your email addresses.

You can only paste a maximum of 500 values into each One Of criteria, so you'll need to paste in the first 500 and then add a second criteria of "Phone Number one of..." and paste in the next 500 email addresses - make sure these two criteria are linked together using Or, not And, otherwise your query won't return any results! Then you can use your query to do a global add.

Gina Gerhard · July 2017

Also - sounds like this is a process you will have to do periodically.

Any way that you can get the RE ID numbers into the other system along with the constituent name and email?

Then, you'd have the IDs available and it would make this process a lot easier.

We do this with MailChimp - we bring constituent names and emails over from RE to MailChimp but we also bring the RE ID number. Then we have the RE ID available when we want to bring data back.

Ryan Hyde · July 2017

Good, email addresses are almost as good as constituent IDs. Once you follow Alan's steps, be sure to output constituent ID, email address, first name, last name. You'll want to see from that list if there are any instances of the same email address existing on multiple records. If so, you'll want to get rid of the ones that are not represented in your original spreadsheet (using first and last name to verify).

Then you can get rid of everything but the constituent ID, add any columns you need for the actions you want to import, and import your data.

Alan French · July 2017

Ryan Hyde:

You'll want to see from that list if there are any instances of the same email address existing on multiple records. If so, you'll want to get rid of the ones that are not represented in your original spreadsheet (using first and last name to verify).

You may also want to do something with those duplicate email addresses, otherwise Joe Bloggs who unsubscribed this month is going to get the newsletter next month except it'll be addressed to his wife Jane Bloggs instead.

Importing Excel to Globally Add?

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