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mboltonmbolton 

Accounts and Contacts Import

I have reviewed  Loading Data into salesforce.com  and in Case I - No dependancy loads it says that loading account and contacts has "no data dependancies".  How does this make sense?  I am trying to import from my old CRM and have an export table of Accounts and a table of Contacts.  Without the ID from Salesforce, how do I connect the contact to the proper account regardless of whether or not I use Connector or Data Loader.  Thanks in advance.

 

JakesterJakester
Create a custom field on the Account called something like old_crm_id and make sure to indicate that it's an External ID field. Then, when you import the account data from your old CRM, be sure to include the old CRM's ID into that field. Now, when you import the contact data, your old CRM presumably has a field on the contact table that references that account ID. The next step is much easier in Data Loader, because it will prompt you when you import the contact data to supply an external id, which you can now provide. It can be done using Excel and sforce connector, but then you've got to link it up using a function such as vlookup.