Last week Connections finally had the highly requested CSV export feature added. It included four export tools which could batch export addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and dates. For many, having these export options is more than enough to meet their needs for creating email or address lists. Others, though, still need a far more comprehensive export option. I’m happy to announce that this week’s update includes this export option. Even better it is free for everyone. In testing, it was able to easily export nearly all the data for almost 30,000 entries in a test database. I expect this export tool to easily export hundreds of thousands of entries with no trouble on a decent web host. So this export tool has been proven to be robust and reliable in testing.
However, there are a couple limitations to this export. I do not think these limitation will affect most but it is important to know that they exist.
- Many of the fields in Connections are repeatable fields. An example being the address fields. You can add as many addresses as you wish to an entry. Each address can be given a type such as “Home”, “Work”, “School” and “Other”. If you add more than one of a single type, only the first of that type will be included in the export. For example, if you add two “Work” addresses, only the first will be included in the export. Now, suppose you have three addresses added to an entry but all with a different type, all three will be included in the export. This is a limitation that applies to all the repeatable fields in Connections.
- Connections has support for adding custom metadata to its entries, however, this metadata is not exported. As an example, the info added by the free extensions Education Level and Income Level is metadata. It is this metadata which will not be included in the export.
With all these export tools available, there is still one area not completely covered and is Categories. The categories are exported as part of the new comprehensive export but there is not a way to export only the categories. This will be added in the next update and as an added bonus a free bulk category import will be added too. These free import/export tools along with the CSV Import extension should meet almost everyone’s needs.
I was delighted to see the arrival of this tool, as I am in the process of migrating my site from one host to another and had been very disappointed to discover that my usual migration tool had failed to bring the Connections data across.
Sadly, I find I am no further forward. The export tool appears to create a reasonable csv file but although the import appears to run ok, there is still no data on my new site after the process has completed.
@ Paul
re: The export tool appears to create a reasonable csv file
So, just to confirm, you opened the CSV file and it looked good?
re: there is still no data on my new site after the process has completed.
So nothing shows on the Connections : Manage admin? Did you make sure to change all the filters so they are set to display all? What version of the CSV Import do you have installed?
Hi Steven,
I had the same issue. I exported the csv file using “Export All” from one Connections account. The IMPORT to Connections resulted in no data. I just purchased the CSV Import tool. I changed all of the filters to display.
@ Carrie
Please post support questions to the support forums as the comments is not a good place to handle support. Were you exporting from site and importing to a new site? If you were, unmap the Entry ID column. By having that column mapped on the import, the import was trying to update entries which did not exist in the new site. Hope that helps!