Importing only Donors from Other Programs

It is possible to import donors exported from other programs into DONATION using the Database à Import Donors option.

With the Database à Import Donors option, you can import either tab-separated text files or Dbase 2 or 3 files, containing any combination of the fields in DONATION's Donor table, in any order. The only fields that must be filled in are Last_Name and Addr1.

A tab-separated text file is a plain-text file where each donor is on its own line, and each field on the line is separated by one tab character. Fields should not be enclosed in quotation marks. It may have a row of column headers at the top if you wish.

It is important to understand that this procedure does not replace any existing data, but rather adds additional donors into your database. All existing donors will stay there. In fact, you can end up with two copies of each donor if you import the same file twice by accident! This procedure makes no attempt to identify duplicates.

When you select Database à Import Donors, a dialog box comes up. In section 1 of the dialog box, you select which fields will be imported from the file, and in which order. It defaults to importing the fields Last_Name, First_Name, Addr1, Addr2, and Addr3, in that order. To import more or fewer fields you can use the Add and Remove buttons. The list of fields at the left shows all fields that can be imported, that have not yet been added to the list at the right. The list of fields at the right shows all fields that you have selected to import. If the fields on the right are in the wrong order, click on one you want to move and use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to re-arrange them.

The following table lists the maximum column widths for each possible column that can be imported, plus whether that column is required (must be filled in for every donor). If your data has either the wrong number of columns, of data that is too wide in some columns, you will get a detailed error message and the import will be cancelled. You will then have to fix up your data and try again.

Field	Max Length	Required	Description
Business_Name	60	N	If the donor is a business or organization, the name of that business
Last_Name	30	N	The donor's last name, or if the donor is an organization, the last name of a contact at the organization
First_Name	30	N	The donor's first name, or if the donor is an organization, the first name of a contact at the organization
Addr1	40	Y	The first line of the donor's address
Addr2	40	N	The second line of the donor's address
Addr3	40	N	The third line of the donor's address (may contain the postal code if the Postal Code field is not used)
Postal_Code	10	N	The Postal Code or Zip Code of the donor
Phone	18	N	The donor's phone number
Charitable_ Number	20	N	If the donor is another charity, their charitable number
Member_ Number	10	N	A member or envelope number for the donor
Other1	50	N	Can be used for any consistent information, e.g. you might use this one for a fax number
Other2	50	N	Can be used for any consistent information, e.g. you might use this one for an email address
Other3	50	N	Can be used for any consistent information, e.g. you might use this one for children's names
Comments	Any length	N	Any desired free-form text about this donor
Pledge_Amount	Dollar amount	N	An annual pledge amount that the donor has pledged to donate. May contain commas at the thousands, but not a dollar sign.

You must import either a business name or both the last and first name for each donor (or all three). The Last_Name, First_Name and Addr1 fields must be among the selected fields for importing.

In section 2, there is a checkbox to specify whether you wish to review the data to be imported before it is added to the database. I strongly suggest that you leave this checked, so that you can check that you had the right selection of fields, in the right order, matching the file that is being imported.

In section 3, you specify the name of the Import File that is to be imported. You can either just type it in (include the full path – drive and directory), or use the Browse button to bring up a standard File Open dialog box to find the file.

In section 4, you can specify how many lines of column headers are at the top of the import file. Most commonly this should be set to 0 (if there are no column headers in the file) or 1 (if there is one line of column headers in the file). This setting only applies to text files, not Dbase files.

Once you have entered your desired choices for sections 1 to 4, click the Import button. The first thing that will happen (if your import file is a text file) is that it will read the import file, and look for problems in it. If there are any problems, it will tell you that fact, and display the list of problems in the Notepad program. Print off that list for later fixing, then exit Notepad. An example of such a problem is a missing Last_Name, a missing address, data in a field that is too long for the field lengths in DONATION, or a duplicate member/envelope number.

If problems were found, in most cases a fixed file will be created, with overly long names shortened, missing fields that are required in DONATION filled in with fake values, etc. Its name will be re-entered into the Import File entry box for you. To try importing the fixed file, click the Import button again.

If you checked the checkbox in section 2 to review the data, it will now be displayed for you. Take a good look at it. Make sure the right data is shown with the right fields, and that the row of headers from your data is not displayed. (N.B. the program will have put in its own headers, so what you are checking is that you don't seem to have two or more rows of headers.) Also check that all of the donors you expected to be displayed are in fact displayed. If everything looks fine, click OK and the import will begin. If there are problems with what you see in the data preview window, click Cancel and the Import will not be done.

After you click OK in the preview window (or after you click Import if you didn't select to preview the data), it will perform the import. When it is done, it will tell you so, then close the Import window.

If errors were shown in Notepad and you printed them off, you should now go back to each donor that had an error displayed in that printout, and decide how you wish to fix it.

One of my users who switched to DONATION from Membership Plus gave me the following instructions.

If you want to import your donors from Membership Plus, first use its Export Wizard to export the donor fields to an Excel file, then open that Excel file. The only complication is that in Membership Plus, there are separate City and State fields, whereas in DONATION, you need to import those merged together into the Addr3 field.

assuming that G and H are the columns containing the City and the State fields. (You may prefer to omit the comma.) Copy that formula into all rows of the spreadsheet.

Next, we want to make that column containing the formula just contain its values instead. To do that, highlight the whole column, press Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard, then Ctrl-P to paste it back on top of itself. Near the first row in the column, a "Paste Options" box will appear. Click that to see the options, and select the option for "Values only". After doing that, you can delete the columns that contain the City and the State separately, since you no longer need them.

After this, use File -> Save As in Excel and save it as "Text (tab delimited)". That will give you a file that you can import into DONATION, using the instructions above.