Thread

Client sent us their member data in MS Excel, we exported it to a .csv.

A .csv created by Excel doesn’t have “Enclosing Characters” so we’ve tried leaving that blank, but EE is combining the last data-item in a row, with the first item of the next row.

EE 1.1.4 Build:  20110201

Basic data is set up like this in the csv:

email,screen_name,username
email,screen_name,username
email,screen_name,username
email,screen_name,username

Do I need to add something to the “Enclosing Characters” to make this work?

Kurt, is this Excel for the Mac, or for Windows? Which version of Excel?

The original Excel file was created in a PC, then opened and saved to CSV with Excel on a Mac. (office 2010).

Kurt,

What does your Assign Fields screen look like?
What visually is the indicator that EE is combining the last data-item in a row, with the first item of the next row?

I just created a simple 3 member csv with Excel on a PC right now and I get to assign those fields and complete conversion

I have attached mine. Can you PM me yours , just 3 rows will do

HI John,

Instead of having me match all three columns, it wanted me to match each data item with a field. There’s about 150 members and (remember it was combining 2 in each) there were about 300 matches needed.

It looked like what should have happened, is that I should have been matching 3 times, one for each column total.

I’m PM’d you the file I’m working from.

I could send you the excel too if you like.

Its been about 3 or four years since I did a member import and while I do remember it being a little more complicated that I thought it should be at the time, it did work as advertised,... but this time… I’m not so lucky.

Kurt,

I tried initially with the file you sent and I could replicate what you say
So I opened up your file in Excel and just saved it out again and it works as expected. I sent it onto you via PM

I blame Microsoft then…. why can’t MS Office for Mac ever work like MS Office for PC… Its just not fair.

Pretty strange results aye!?

I’ll give your’s a try John.

I’ll report back the results…. but it may take a day. Its now hour 15 and I’m giving up for the day/night…. whatever this is. must sleep

Thanks again.

No problems. If you need a larger file converted just grab me via my email and I’ll pass it onto you

I was able to get the file from the PC version of Excel to create the XML file, and the XML file did import the members, but it kicked up these errors for each member:

The username you chose is not available (Username: 'sample77' - within user record 'sample77')
The screen name you chose is not available (Screen Name: 'Sample Person' - within user record 'sample77')
The email you chose is not available (Email: '[email protected]' - within user record 'sample77')

All the members appear to have member accounts at this point, so I believe this client will be happy, but I wonder if its time for an EE 2.0 version of member importing that’s a little smoother.

Thanks so much Sue and John, you two have been bailing me out of all sorts of things lately and it’s always appreciated!

Hi, Kurt -

Just to clarify, even though it threw out errors for the user “sample77”  - it created that user?  That does seem a bit odd.  That’s using John Henry’s file, or your own?

If it’s your own, can you attach it here so that we can try to reproduce?

Thank you!

Hi Lisa,

The users are showing up in the user list and they appear to be set up right in EE, although I didn’t dig into the database to check.

I used John’s file. My file wouldn’t work with EE.

Hi Kurt,

Those users definitely haven’t been replicated in the CSV have they? Is there any chance that the import tried to run twice. Those errors are what I would expect if either or both of those things happened.

Cheers

Greg

HI Greg,

“no” to both questions.

@John, can you send Greg a copy of the file you sent me? I can’t PM Greg, so I can’t send him the attachment.

Kurt and Lisa,

The XML file was created correctly with no dupes and imported without a hitch so I am not sure where those errors came from for now. I left the csv and converted XML file for my colleagues to test also

Noting that I just ran into this and was about to file a bug report. For the record, what I was going to post:

Was trying to use the Member Import Utility CSV to XML conversion tool. Have a simple 4-line CSV for testing.

When I get to the Assign Fields screen, that screen goes on and on, looping through each line of the CSV. I might be wrong about this, but I expect this screen would allow you to select matching fields using only the first line to represent each line in the file? If I had 500 members in the file, I’d have to match 500 members worth of fields that way - that can’t be right.

I’ve tried both comma-delimited and comma-delimited with double-quote enclosing characters.

The only way I could get the Assign Fields screen to work as it should when generating the file from a Mac version of Excel was to export the CSV file in Windows Comma Separated format.

Now to solve the seemingly bogus “Line does not match structure” error I’m getting.