Last week’s tip focused on mapping custom source data during a Custom Import. As you learned previously, the Custom Import type reveals a few extra options that enable you to:
This week’s tip will help you make sense of the Merge Options screen to ensure data imports as expected. When importing data to or exporting data from a database, you can select merge options for records and related items, such as notes and histories. These merge options look at the source records and destination records and determine what happens with data that matches and does not match. Whether a record matches or not is first determined by whether or not it has the same Globally Unique Identifier as an existing record, and secondarily determined by your Duplicate Matching preferences.
1. From within the Custom Import Wizard, on the “Specify Merge Options” page, click Contact (or Group, or Company) to change the default settings for data merge options.
2. The “Contact Merge Options” screen includes options for source records that match destination records and options for source records that do not match destination records.
For each option, click the drop down list and select from the available choices:
a. When source records match destination records you can specify to:
b. When source records do not match destination records you can specify to:
3. After making your selections, click OK to return to the “Specify Merge Options” page. You may optionally select from the additional options:
- You may select Include attachments to import attachments from the source database.
- Select Include other users’ public activities to import other users’ public meetings, to-dos and other activities.
4. On the “Completing Import Wizard” page, click Finish to begin the Import.
5. As mentioned, if you selected Confirm each match earlier, during the import or export process, when a matching record is detected, the “Match Confirmation” dialog box will require you to manually confirm each match and select an action:
After all matching records are dealt with your data will be successfully imported!