[The Wizard of Oz]

Howdy

Getting the following error on a csv import for UPDATING customer records.

Could not find matching record. Primary name field was not mapped or is empty.

Now, I can’t use the internal ID as the list is coming from an external list that doesn’t have any NS values in it other than the email address. I assumed that on an “update” it would try to look for existing records based on the first field imported. I guess not.

Does anyone have some idea how to achieve this?
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[The Wizard of Oz]

RE: Updating customer records

Note: NS help returns no results when searching for “primary name field”

[rnedelkow]

Maybe you could use the Name as the reference type. The Assistant finds and references text strings (such as “Joe Public”) for the mapped field. See Help topic Selecting Reference Types.

Thanks,

Rob

[The Wizard of Oz]

RE: Updating customer records

Originally posted by rnedelkow

Maybe you could use the Name as the reference type. The Assistant finds and references text strings (such as “Joe Public”) for the mapped field. See Help topic Selecting Reference Types.

Thanks,

Rob

Ok. That’s as clear as mud but I’ll search the help topic for the phrase you suggested. Perhaps that phrase would be better in the error report than the one currently being displayed…

[The Wizard of Oz]

RE: Updating customer records

Nope… that didn’t help at all.

It seems I haven’t explained myself properly. The reason for posting is because I’ve read he help topic. It doesn’t do as suggested. Help.

I have a group of customers. Let’s call them Group A. Based on some external findings, a certain proportion of that group need to have a field changed. The criteria to decide whether or not they need to be changed is if their email address appears in a spreadsheet that has been compiled. Not everyone on the spreadsheet is in NS and we don’t want to import any extra data at this stage.

My initial thought was that NS would pick up the email address field as the field to decide whether or not to update the record within NS. I am only perming an “update”.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Surely someone has attempted this successfully?

[The Wizard of Oz]

RE: Updating customer records

Ok I found a way to do this in excel. If anyone is interested here is the formula I used to show if an email address is duplicated.

I pasted this into column N of my spreadsheet (all the way down to the last record)

=IF(ISERROR(MATCH(K2,$M$1:$M$999999,0)),””,L1)

I exported all email addresses(column K) and internal id’s (column L) of Group A. I added the list of email addresses I needed to compare (column M). If an email address from column K is also in column N, the internal ID listed in column L will display again in column N. I then use the internal ID’s populated into column N to perform my update.

Yeah, a bit harder than being able to just select a field to compare from within NS, but at least I got a solution!

Feel free to adapt the formula to your needs, anyone out there.

[kmuller@onvia.com]

RE: Updating customer records

Wiz,

Unfortunately NS does not compare an external source (such as a CSV) and map it into its self. The only way that I’ve found is to do an export of NS (all customer records) via a search (make sure you have the mapping field in the results), map via email (or whatever) and vlookup in Excel.

This is the quickest way to find what exists in NS, and then you have the internal ID to update the DB. Not the best, but doable. Although I like your Excel formula. much more fun than a vlookup.

Would be nice if NS allowed a comparison type import. Such as “compare this list with NS and let me know if they exist or not” type compare.

-Kurt

[The Wizard of Oz]

RE: Updating customer records

Thanks Kurt. That’s another good workaround.

[Author]

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