I realize this topic has been discussed in multiple locations already, but I still don't feel I have found a direct solution or answer to the information I'm looking for, so thanks in advance for your patience!

 I am currently working on importing alumni into RE.  Before I came into this position, there was a large time period in which the job of updating this information was neglected.  I have a lot of files to import to catch up to our current year, many of which will be 100% new to RE, but some that will already be in there as donors, etc.  (this information is not known to us without manually checking RE to see if they're in there or not)

 Am I correct in understanding that there is no "easy" way to ensure that I am not importing constituents already in our RE database? I've imported quite a bit already using the "update existing records" option, and continually run the duplicate constituent search to merge or eliminate the duplicates.  I would obviously prefer for there to be an automatic duplicate check before I import, but it seems like checking the "use duplicate criteria for new records" doesn't catch them.

I realize this is a beginner type question, but appreciate your helping a newbie out!

Sincerely,

April Archambault, Assiniboine Community College-Brandon, Manitoba, Canada

Oops, did something go wrong with your post? I'm not seeing anything come up.

With alumni the best way to check for dupes is to use a student ID or some unique identifier if your school uses one.  If you do not use one then, yes, it becomes much more difficult although not impossible. 

If you are using the update existing records import you have to be importing using the exact same ID (either Cons ID, Import ID or SSN).  If your import does not have that ID (are you filling in the ID field?) it will just create a new record because ID is the first thing it tries to match. 

If you use a Student ID and they are in your RE database (maybe as Cons IDs) then when you import you can import them all with the your dupe criteria based on that ID field.  Depending on what you want it to do to to those already in the database you may want to do an update existing records import based on that ID with the checkbox to add new records it does not find or do a new record import with it creating an exception file of dupes that you can import only certain criteria later.

Ok, the bit about using the student ID makes so much sense! So far, we have not used that info unfortunately. (nor did the people before me).  I had been just leaving the import ID blank, which now seems so horribly wrong.

 Thanks for coming to my rescue again! I will try to figure out a new system using student IDs...just not sure what I'll do with those that have already been entered. Perhaps that could be a manual job for the summer student! Who knows...

 Take Care,

April

Hello April and All,

I am in a similar situation as April: We have many imports to do and the spreadsheets of data contain a mixture of existing constituents and new supporters; we currently do not use any type of ID's (but we are adding them soon!).

Is there any other way to check to see if people are in the database other than manually looking up each record? This is very time consuming. I know that the Import Module will indicate which rows are duplicates, but then we must go into RE and do a thorough search to see if we find that person. If we do find the person, we then manually delete the row out of the spreadsheet.

As far as the order in which we do our importing process, we always look up every record FIRST before using the Import Module because we don't want to bother massaging the data or fixing a sloppy address if the person is already in RE. This is the time consuming part!

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Carla Robinson

Associate Director

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Hi Carla,

As Melissa mentioned, you can modify your duplicate criteria in Configuration.  If you have it set on something fairly general like last name and first name, you can point to the file that you are planning to import and choose the options 'Validate data only' and 'Use duplicate criteria for new records' on the General tab and on the Summary tab check the option to 'Create control report' and the control report which records appear to be duplicates.  Then you can look up only those names instead of looking up every record first.

Thanks,

Naomi

 Oh April - I totally understand!  You are describing almost the exact situation I came into a bit over a year ago. 

We took many of the steps discussed above.  First, I set workstudies on entering/double checking the student IDs for the last twenty year's worth of grads.  (We have about 400 grads a year, so this wasn't as bad as it sounds - although I know some of those kids got tired of doing it.)  I did tons of random checks to ensure accuracy of the data.

Then we began to look at importing all the information that was missing - and the student IDs kicked out the existing constituents just perfectly.  I always validated the data using different criteria for the duplicate constituent check.  That way it got several passes before the import. 

The existing students were then updated via import or by hand depending on the situation.  A very long road for us - but worth it for the data.

To add more food for thought.  We use the student id for our alumni as the ConsId.  However, if they gave while a student (which can be the case due to our non-traditional student population and senior gifts), I run into duplicates because when they give I don't have their student id.  Depending on the number of exceptions, I either look them up manually (doesn't usually happen) or I export RE constituents who aren't coded as alumni -- around 20,000 records - usually, ConsId, first, last, bday, city, state.  Using MS Access I join this file with my exception file -- this gets me pretty close to who belongs to what existing record and which shoud be new records.