Thread

I’m importing just the basics it’s requesting: username, screen_name and email, where the username is the same as the email address. Each piece is formatted right. (The error message is too generic to be of any use.)

Am I missing a field that’s not mentioned?
Anything else that could cause this problem?

Hello apiwebservices,

I am sorry to hear you are running into this snag.

I would like to get a better understanding of the error and the format of what you are doing.

Can you paste in the error, even if it is a bit generic?

Can I see a sample line of what you are trying to import?

As I understand it, you are attempting to convert a CSV file to XML.

Thank you ahead of time for the information, I will be on the lookout for your reply.

Cheers,

Hi Shane

You can close this topic. 

The importer has created 6,000 blank entries into my Members > View All screen.
I’m not going to attempt generating another 6,000 blank entries that I’ll just have to delete, 10 at a time.
Yes, I was attempting to convert a CSV file to XML.

Thanks for the link, but that user guide is the least helpful documentation I’ve encountered.

Hello apiwebservices,

I am really sorry to hear that you did not have a good experience with the member Import Utility. I agree, the error message is not all that helpful.

Would you mind telling me where the documentation let you down? We are always seeking to improve things around here and your feedback would be appreciated.

I would love to turn your experience with the utility around, if your up to keeping this thread open a little longer so I can do that, that would be great!

Right off the bat I see one roadblock that resulted in the failed process. The usernames cannot be an email addresses. Usernames must be a unique ID. So for each user, even if you use a plugin later that allows the user to login with their email address, the username must be changed to a unique name.

Also, for this process all required fields must be filled out. Even if the required field is empty, like a password. If the field is required and it’s not there, then the process will not complete correctly.

If there is anything else I can do to help, please let me know.

Oh one more thing, I suggest backing up your database, just to be safe.

Cheers,

From the user guide:

Username, Screen Name, and Email are required, and all standard member database fields are available to you

There is no mention that usernames can’t be an email address; the only mentioned required fields are these three. Would be nice detail to have in the user guide.

Backing up the database would have been great advice before I’d attempted to import, but since I’m a “new” user and additions to the user guide are restricted to “experts”, I can’t add any User Contributed Notes. I get why you put that in place, but your new users are going to be the ones who can flesh out the details and see problems with the guide more than your experts.

This isn’t the only problem I’ve had when encountering the user guide, just the most painful one.

I’ll bookmark this forum post for future use. If you have a way to eliminate 6,000 blank entries in the Members > View all page, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I’ll just skip this part. Would rather not attempt to generate a bunch of unique user IDs on top of trying to clean up the blank entries mess.

Thanks

Hello apiwebservices,

I am really sorry about your experience with this. The documentation on the Importing Members Utility could be better and I will be taking your input and passing it on to our documentation creator.

With a backed up database, any unwanted changes can be undone by restoring the good database/table. This can be done with the MySQL command line or using a Graphical User Interface like phpMyAdmin. This is your fail safe for trying again with the utility. If you are not comfortable with the database, you might find someone who is and get their help. It can be unnerving to work with data sometimes, especially if you are not familiar with the tools.

I just want to let you know one more time that I am sorry about your experience with the utility and I will be taking your input to the right person. We don’t just say that here, we really do take our user’s input seriously.

Cheers,

Shane,

To make this more helpful it would be good to provide a sample .csv file with the basic cells that we can view to sample. For example I am trying to import users right now and dont know if I need to have ROW 1 with the headings e.g. id, screen name, email and password.

Hello Berkeley,

I will run this by the team and see if we can add something like that to the docs.

Are you creating this spreadsheet by hand or exporting from a database? What Enclosing Character are you using?

Please let me know what you find and I will ask about getting an example file created.

Cheers,