Salesforce Importpersonal Cheatsheet
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IMPORT YOUR PERSONAL ACCOUNTS AND
CONTACTS
Summary
Import up to of your
personal contacts and
associated business
accounts from common
contact manager
applications This wizard is
available to all users
With the Import Wizard for My Contacts you can import your contacts and associated business accounts
from Outlook ACT or any program that can save data in the CSV commaseparated values format
such as Excel or GoldMine
If youre an administrator and you want to import business accounts and contacts for multiple users see
Importing Your Organizations Accounts and Contacts
To learn how to use the Salesforce app to import contacts from mobile device contact lists into Salesforce
see Import Contacts from Mobile Device Contacts Lists into Salesforce
Preparing the Import File
To get started prepare your contact and business account data so its in the proper format for importing
to Salesforce
Compare the account and contact data to existing Salesforce account and contact fields to make sure
there are places to import the information
If necessary ask your administrator to create custom fields or picklist values for data that cant be
mapped to existing Salesforce fields For example if some of your contact information includes sales
region data create a Salesforce custom field called Sales Region
Export your existing account and contact information to a CSV file You use this CSV file as your import
file See the Salesforce online help for tips on creating export files from ACT Outlook GoldMine and
other data sources
Verify that the data in the import file is in the correct format
Sort the data by account name and make sure that all company names are spelled accurately and
consistently For example HP and Hewlett Packard create separate accounts
Ensure that there is only one phone number per field
Make sure that contact names and titles are in separate fields
Make sure the file only contains values in one language
Label each column in the file with a name that corresponds to the standard or custom Salesforce
field where you want to import the columns data This simplifies the data mapping step that you
perform when running the import wizard
This table shows some examples of contact field mappings The Salesforce online help also provides
some mapping examples
Label for Your Import File
Salesforce Field
Contact Description
Contact Description
Contact Note
Creates a note attached to the contact
Lead Source
Contact Lead Source
Last updated July
Import Your Personal Accounts and Contacts
Running the Data Import Wizard
Running the Data Import Wizard
Testing Your Import
File
Before importing all of your
account and contact data
we recommend that you try
a small test import first
Create a copy of your import
file that contains five records
and use the import wizard to
verify that the test data is
imported correctly
To run the Import Wizard for My Contacts
From your personal settings enter Import My in the Quick Find box then select Import My
Accounts Contacts
Click Launch Wizard
Follow the instructions on the wizard screens
The import process involves these steps
Specify the source of the import file for example Outlook ACT or a different data source
Upload the CSV import file into the import wizard
Define the matching criteria that the wizard uses to avoid importing duplicate accounts or contacts
Map the columns in the import file to the desired Salesforce fields
When you finish the wizard the import file is processed immediately
Note You can only import into fields that you can access via your page layout and fieldlevel
security settings
Importing Notes and Picklists
If the import file contains data that doesnt map to your Salesforce fields you can include it in notes on
either contact or account records
Each note is allowed a maximum of characters
Notes cant contain embedded quotes for example this is a note with embedded quotes
The notes title is determined by the column header in the import file The data in the column is added
to the body of the note
If the import file includes picklist values you can import them into existing Salesforce picklists that accurately
represent the data When importing picklists
You can import any value into a picklist even if the value isnt predefined Your administrator can edit
the picklist later to include the new values
In the import file separate multiselect picklist values with semicolons
You can import a maximum of new picklist or multiselect picklist values for any field during a
single import
Preventing Duplicate Accounts and Contacts
To minimize the chance of importing duplicate accounts and contacts to Salesforce the Data Import
Wizard looks for data in the import file that matches existing Salesforce records
You can identify matching accounts and contacts by name or email address
When matching contacts by name the import wizard compares the import data to the Account
Name Account Site First Name and Last Name or Full Name fields
When matching accounts by name the Data Import Wizard compares the import data to the
Account Name and Account Site fields
The Data Import Wizard uses these rules when looking for matches
Import Your Personal Accounts and Contacts
Updating Existing Salesforce Accounts and Contacts
Case is ignored Forbes is the same as FORBES
Punctuation is ignored IBM is the same as IBM
Abbreviations arent treated as duplicates HP and Hewlett Packard are imported as two different
accounts
These words are ignored in account names when surrounded by spaces or punctuation or when they
appear at the beginning or end of a name
Co Company Corp Corporation Inc Incorporated International Intl Limited LLC Ltd PLC The
For example Limited The matches The Limited but not TheLimited
com is not ignored so if you have entries for Forbes and Forbescom two accounts are created
Duplicate information in the import file is merged into the same Salesforce record
Updating Existing Salesforce Accounts and Contacts
If the Data Import Wizard finds a name in the import file that matches an existing Salesforce contact
record the wizard updates the record with the import data
The import wizard never overwrites your existing account data unless you select the Overwrite
existing account values checkbox If selected the wizard updates existing account values
with newly imported values but doesnt update existing field data with blank values If you dont select
this option the wizard updates empty account fields but leaves fields with existing data alone
If you do not have read and write access to matching records in Salesforce the import wizard creates
new records instead of updating the existing records
