Handbook / Reference
Bringing your data in
Ten thousand contacts at two thousand firms is not a typing job. Every import is previewed before it writes anything.
Settings carries two CSV importers: contacts (with their companies, worked out from the free text) and buildings (grouped into complexes). Files are read by their header row, or by position when there is none.
- Preview firstThe preview writes nothing. It says exactly what would be created, what matches something already on file, and what cannot be read at all - including any contact types it does not recognise.
- Run itThe import creates what the preview promised, inside a transaction.
- Run it again if you likeThe same file twice creates nothing the second time. Contacts without an email are matched by their name at their company, so even those do not duplicate.
This was proven against a real 10,840-contact export: first run created 10,840 contacts and 2,069 companies; the second run created none. Search stays in the ten-millisecond range at that size.
Access: Importing writes to the directory.