Importing Donors from Other Programs

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

With the Database à Import à Donors option, you can import Excel files or tab-separated text files, containing any combination of the fields in DONATION's Donor table, in any order. The only fields that must be filled in are a field or fields for the donor's name, and Addr1.

If you select an Excel file to import, DONATION will have Excel invisibly save it to a tab-separated text file, and import the text file.

A tab-separated text file is a plain text file where each donor is on its own line, and each field on the line (even empty ones) is separated by one tab character. Fields may optionally be enclosed in quotation marks, but that is not necessary. It may have a row of column headers at the top if you wish. If you currently have the data in a spreadsheet program such as Excel, you can easily export it to tab-separated text with the File à Save As menu option, using the Save as type "Text (Tab Delimited)" (or words to that effect in spreadsheet programs other than Excel), or of course just let DONATION do that for you.

It is important to understand that this procedure does not replace or update 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 (except for not allowing duplicate Member/Envelope Numbers).

When you select Database à Import à Donors, the following dialog box comes up:

The values you select in this dialog box are saved when you click Import, and restored on any future visit to this dialog box, so if you have used it before, you may see different settings than the ones above when you open it again.

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, the first time you use it. The Donor List fields at the left are all fields that can be imported, that have not yet been added to the Fields to Import list at the right. The list of fields at the right shows all fields that you have selected to import, in the order they are expected to be found in the text file from which you will import the data.

To import more or fewer fields you can use the Add and Remove buttons, or double-clicking. The Add button adds a selected field from the Donor Fields list to the Fields to Import list. The Remove button removes a selected field from the Fields to Import list and puts it back into the Donor Fields list. Alternatively, double-clicking fields in either list will move them to the other list. Certain combinations of columns are impossible, and some columns are required - the program will tell you if you are trying to make a field selection that is not allowed. Please read any messages that come up about this carefully.

If the Fields to Import on the right are in the wrong order, so that they don't correspond to the order in the input file, single-click on one you want to move and use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to re-arrange them. The Donor Fields list on the left is always in alphabetical order, for ease of finding fields in it.

The following table lists the maximum number of characters in each possible column that can be imported, and describes each column. If your data has either the wrong number of columns, or data that has too many characters in some columns, you will get a detailed error message and the import will be canceled. You will then have to fix up your data and try again.

Field	Max Length	Description
Business Name	60	If the donor is a business or organization, the name of that business
Last Name	30	The donor's last name, or if the donor is an organization, the last name of a contact at the organization
First Name	30	The donor's first name, or if the donor is an organization, the first name of a contact at the organization
Name: First Last	61	The first and last names of the donor, combined into one field (e.g. "John Smith"). If multiple words are found in this field, the last word is considered to be the last name, and whatever precedes it is considered to be the first name.
Name: Last, First	62	The last and first names of a donor, combined into one field, separated by a comma (e.g. "Smith, John")
Addr1	40	The first line of the donor's address
Addr2	40	The second line of the donor's address
Addr3	40	The third line of the donor's address (may contain the postal code if the Postal Code field is not used)
Addr2 (Merge 2 Fields)	40	Merges two fields from the input file (generally City and State/Province) into the Addr2 field in DONATION. Use this or the regular Addr2 field, never both.
Addr3 (Merge 2 Fields)	40	Merges two fields from the input file (generally City and State/Province) into the Addr3 field in DONATION. Use this or the regular Addr3 field, never both.
Postal Code	10	The Postal Code or Zip Code of the donor
Phone	18	The donor's phone number
Charitable Number	20	If the donor is another charity, their charitable number
Member Number	10	A member or envelope number for the donor
Other1	50	Can be used for any consistent information, e.g. you might use this one for a fax number
Other2	50	Can be used for any consistent information, e.g. you might use this one for an email address
Other3	50	Can be used for any consistent information, e.g. you might use this one for children's names
Comments	Any length	Any desired free-form text about this donor
Pledge Amount	Dollar amount	An annual pledge amount that the donor has pledged to donate. May contain commas at the thousands, but not a dollar sign.
Email	60	Email address
Category 1	20	Donor Category 1 value, which must either be empty, or match a value in your pull-down list for that field, which is specified with the Maintenance à Donor Category 1 menu option.
Category 2	20	Donor Category 2 value, which must either be empty, or match a value in your pull-down list for that field, which is specified with the Maintenance à Donor Category 2 menu option.

N.B. You must import either a business name or both the last and first name for each donor (or all three). One or two of the fields for the donor name (e.g. "First Name" plus "Last Name", or "Name: First Last", or "Name: Last, First") must be among the selected fields for importing.

The Addr1 field must always be among the selected fields for importing, and must be filled in, in the input file.

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. It is strongly recommended 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. It can be a text file (*.txt) or either type of Excel file (*.xls or the newer version, *.xlsx).

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).

Once you have entered your desired choices for sections 1 to 4, click the Import button. The first thing that will happen 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 that are fixable, 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 and there were no errors), 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 in the original input file.

Importing from Membership Plus or other programs whose fields don't match DONATION's organization

First, please note that from most versions of Membership Plus, you can use the Database à Import à From Membership Plus menu option to import more than just the donors - it imports your organization info, donation categories (funds), donors (members) and donations (contributions).

If you do want to import only your donors from Membership Plus, or you have a version of Membership Plus that the menu option mentioned above doesn't work for, you can use the Database à Import à Donors menu option described above.

First, use Membership Plus' Export Wizard to export the donor fields to an Excel file. You may want to open that file to confirm that the fields are organized in a way that can be imported into DONATION, based on the list of columns above.

The only complication is that in Membership Plus, there are separate City and State fields. You handle that in DONATION by importing them using the "Addr2 (Merge 2 Fields)" field, or if you have two lines of address preceding those fields, the "Addr3 (Merge 2 Fields)" field.

Other programs (or simple custom Excel donor and donation-tracking spreadsheets) may have their donor names merged into one field, instead of separated into First Name and Last Name fields as in DONATION. Use the "Name: First Last" or "Name: Last, First" import fields in this window to handle that situation, depending on whether the donor names were stored as "John Smith" or "Smith, John" respectively.